


Pergamum

by Phase7



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Alien Biology, Babies, Body Modification, Emergence, Marriage of Convenience, Mech Preg, Oral Sex, Other, Post-War, References to Jane Austen, Scissoring, Sparklings, Sticky Sex, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Surgery, and now it gets trippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:44:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phase7/pseuds/Phase7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Swindle has a unique business proposal for Lockdown that will destroy their lives forever.  Driven from society by their criminal interdependence, they wade into a world of greed, and they might just drown there.<br/>Now, lost in space and far from home, Lockdown and Swindle struggle to find a way back to civilisation, or even to stay alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Will you bond with me for the tax breaks?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Muted longing for now, and a nice long sex scene next chapter.  
> Fill for : http://tfanonkink.livejournal.com/10462.html?thread=9673950#t9673950

It was just around ten years ago.

Lockdown had been in his half-rundown ship's workshop, repairing the ice-ray he'd sliced off of the escapee Blitzwing.  There were old oil and grease and transfluid stains on the walls and floor where he didn't give a damn to clean up.  He was waiting for a spongesnail or a family of house-scraplets to come and do the cleaning for him.  His swivelling stool was on the edge of breaking, but it had a lot of memories and character.  He had two medical berths, but one was covered in junk instead of using a table.  The shattered remains of cheap energon cubes that hadn't dispersed properly crunched under his feet when he walked near the edges of the room.

But Lockdown's tools, and his autoclave, were spotless.  He still kept his spare parts and bolts and screws filed away in tiny drawers.  His joints were well oiled, his favourite mods polished to a shine.  In sum, he was an utter slob but he still gave a scrap about not letting his body or home fester with diseases.  Better than he could say for Devcon last time he'd seen the competition.

Swindle buzzed at the ship's entrance.  Lockdown checked the security cameras, and let him enter.  He said he was in his shop.  Swindle acknowledged with a knowing wave to the camera and headed right over.  They had business to discuss, some big great deal that Swindle "absolutely _needed_ " Lockdown for.  If the merch-mech was that desperate, he could beg in person.  So of course, instead, Swindle strode into the room like he owned the place and all its contents.

"Lockdown!" Swindle crowed.  Great start : that was the tone of voice he used when he wanted something unreasonable.  "Friend, buddy, pal, honey, sweetie!" He definitely was aiming for the "no way" end of the excessive spectrum.  Those were the words that Swindle fell on when he was begging.  But he never begged.  Ever.  Not in words and tones that others interpreted as begging.  But Lockdown knew him well enough by now.  Swindle was starting this barter session with the unique chain of words he used to _beg_ Lockdown, and to bait him.

Lockdown snorted back, pretending he hadn't heard them.

"C'mon, sweetspark..." Swindle glided over to the worktable and draped an arm carefully around Lockdown's spiny shoulders.  Lockdown roughly shrugged him off with another grunt.

"Don't go using words you can't back up," Lockdown said as he shoved Blitzwing's ice-ray away.

"Oh but I _can_ ," Swindle insisted, stepping back gingerly on toe-tips, his hands held up in surrender.

"No.  Y'cant.  You're here with some impossible scheme you wanna sweet-talk me into." Lockdown stood and slammed a parts-drawer closed.

He never should have gone tactile with Swindle at Pergamum.  That moment, Lockdown had let Swindle know that he didn't just like bots in Swindle's size-class, he liked Swindle specifically.  Before, knowing Lockdown had a type was something Swindle absolutely didn't judge but used as an angle for selling things, or people, to the bounty hunter.  After the frustration of Pergamum, where they hadn't actually gotten that far, Swindle had, for free, a whole new angle with which to exploit Lockdown.  Now the teasing started.  Now Swindle dangled himself as a potential boon for free services.  Now Swindle assumed too much about their relationship.

Lockdown preferred it when they were just business partners, and then when they were just two old mechs who'd survived the war without allegiance, Swindle's changing rubsign notwithstanding.  There was a certain pure comeraderie and reciprocity to their relationship.  They both liked money.  They both liked mods.  They could both provide merchandise, services, and information to each other, always just exactly what the other lacked.

They kept each other afloat in the confusion and abysmal business environment for scum following the war.  All the bottom feeders slit each others' throats as business in the pond dried up.  Swindle and Lockdown, through no spoken or written agreement, helped each other out and were left as two big fish in the pond of semi-respectable mercantile villainy.  The world always needed a con-hunter-class bounty hunter.  The world always needed a fence who could find just the sort of "furniture" the rich and the shady looked for.  But after the Magnus cracked down on crime, there was only room for so many of each.

Financially, a monopoly was good.  Socially, it meant Lockdown called up Swindle more and more for supplies, and Swindle on Lockdown for protection and procuration.  Sure, occasionally, Lockdown would get angry at the merchant who lived up to his name too well, and he'd go off to trade with the small fry that lurked in dark alleys.  Occasionally, Swindle would think himself above a bounty hunter that smelled like ten different types of oil, and he'd rent some professional security guards or escorts.  Execrable equipment and the scandalous price of legal assistants drove them back together each time.  Because they both cheated one another equally, and neither could keep track of how many contracts they'd gone through before business started looking like friendship.  
(113, by Swindle's tally, but he wouldn't admit to keeping track.)

"I am a mech who makes the impossible possible," Swindle said, bringing Lockdown's processor off Pergamum and on the present.  "And you won't believe the deal I have lined up for you! It should be illegal!"

"I'm sure it is."

"Nooo, it's entirely legitimate," Swindle shook a finger, and then fluffed up his plating before posing with freshly buffed and waxed plates under the nicotene yellow of the workshop lights.  Oh.  This was going to be good.  "Lockdown, are _you_ ready for a _once in a lifetime offer_? Are you ready for a deal that will _change your life_?"

Lockdown sat down, and held his hook with his left hand, almost like a patient gentleman.  More like an impatient bounty hunter waiting for Swindle to get on with it so that today's ruse could just get SPOKEN already.

"Lockdown, will you marry me for the tax breaks?" Swindle said, arms held wide and his face beaming with bright optics and a wide open smile.

For a few seconds, Lockdown wasn't sure he'd heard that.  Then his massive brows furrowed.  "Marry you for the tax breaks?"

"Yes, that's what I said, keep up.  But don't get left behind, because this is a LIMITED TIME OFFER!"

"And if time runs out on me, who the slag do you have lined up to be your beau? Ramjet?" Lockdown didn't allow time for a response.  "No.  You got no one else.  Why should I?"

"As if you can live without me.  Just think about it.  An unlimited pick of my goods and services.  A joint bank account with my prodigious publicly held funds.   _Fifteen percent a year_ interest! That's _insane_! Also specially weaselled out of the fine print of the law by yours truly, but why have modesty now? A penthouse apartment.  Anything your heart desires.  Money.  Mechs.  Highgrade.  Mods." Swindle made his pitch with grand gesture.  Lockdown stared forward, unmoved.

"Don't want no penthouse."

"And the money?" Swindle slowed his voice in invitation.

"And what do you get out of it?"

"All of the above, and did I mention fifteen percent interest? At multiple banks, I won't lie, so you have to pretend your name is Dion to sign some documents, but I'm sure you're game for that..."

"No, I'm not.  I don't get anything out of this.  Nothing I don't already have." Lockdown rose from his seat again, placing his spiny back and coattails between himself and Swindle.

"Oh, come on, _please_ , Lockdown? I have honeymoon plans in Pergamum and everything!"

"Pergamum?" Lockdown turned his head, warily, his red eyes bright.  He could see Swindle's eyes heavily lidded, the pinpricks of his pupils gazing up over an expertly bowed head and canted hips.  "You're one sick bot, Swindle."

"I was hoping you could come with me.  I always wanted to know what a honeymoon suite was like.  It has to be reserved for two."

"They call ME the sadist." Lockdown forced himself to look away.  There was an uncomfortable pause while the bounty hunter remained silent as stone and Swindle's processor ticked away with recalculations.  "I get one day."

"One day?" The audible calculations coming from Swindle's chest stopped and then started up again.

"You're going to chase mechs at the beach and energon bars.  Pretty little ones that you won't ever see again.  So I want one day.  That's my condition."

"If that's all you want, you're a terrible bargainer."

"You were either expecting me to turn you down outright or fall head over heels for 15% interest.  This is the best you're gonna get in the middle of striking out and your dream scenario."

"Sign on it?"

"Oh, we're gonna sign one _pit_ of a prenup," Lockdown growled as he turned around.

"Everything, all nice and pretty in writing," Swindle said.  His affect was unchanged : gloating, arms akimbo, torso cocked with pride.  "Exactly what we owe one another."

"Maybe I'll want more than just one night," Lockdown warned.

"What? You mean once a month? That's extortion!" Swindle placed a hand over his spark and turned up his face.

"No, I meant your _TIME_ ," Lockdown barked, then looked to the side, his vocaliser subdued.  "I don't expect you to be attracted to a mech like me.  You probably won't even enjoy my day in Pergamum."

"I'll make the best of it," Swindle said lightly.

"We'll just go back to the way things are right now.  I know that.  I LIKE it that way.  Don't make it slagging complicated!" Lockdown yelled again.  "Don't try to seduce me.  None of your sly little asides promising scrap you won't give.  Don't pretend I'm attractive.  Just stop that whole stupid game, okay?"

Swindle shrugged.  "Easy enough.  I've heard marriage takes all the fun out of flirting."

"Ha. Ha." Lockdown made a dismissive motion with his hand.  His hook dug at the top of his knee.  "I want your time to remind us why you came to me about this rust-brained idea."

"Hmmm?"

"You wouldn't have trusted anyone else.  We're friends."

Swindle laughed.  "That word sounds even more scandalous than 'marry me for the tax breaks'."

"Partners in crime," Lockdown corrected.  "After Pergamum, we'll just go back to our lives.  Taking trophies, making money, sharing stories and hard earned energon."

"Funny how we can just forget Pergamum," Swindle clasped his fingers together and then swiftly untangled them like an explosion _poof_ , "like it never happens." 

"Yeah.  Funny that."


	2. I always was a narcissist.

_"Funny how we can just forget Pergamum, like it never happens..."_

But there was no way either of them could ever forget.

They arrived in Pergamum happily.  It was a quiet moon, with liquid water, endless pink garnet beaches, and harmless local fauna.  The limestone, polished coral, and white marble of the vacation retreat gleamed exotically.  The constant cool breeze that offset the hot Thracian sun billowed pure white sheets between the endless rows of columns and arches beside grey-blue tiled roofs.  The constant pressure of the wind kept the sheets aloft like a tent, making shade for lazy sprawling and cool diversions.  Other mechs meandered about in this paradise, all of them young, carefree, pampered, and living the dream that Pergamum created.

There'd been some winking and flirting with the desk attendant when Swindle had checked in.  Lockdown was supposed to just be a business associate, or a servant, or anyone but the bondmate expected to arrive for Swindle's honeymoon suite.  In revenge, Lockdown threw the bags at Swindle and made him carry them up to the room.  This had dulled the merchant's enthusiasm only until the large doors opened and the luxurious suite was revealed.  Then, Swindle chattered on about all of the floor space, and the amenities, and the balcony, and the view of the young hotties by the pool, and the activities he had planned to pamper himself.  All while Lockdown discovered the vibrating bed and fell asleep while its callipers massaged his struts for only twelve credits an hour.  Since Lockdown wasn't invited to the spa and massage parlour Swindle had booked, he felt completely justified.  The first day was not their day.

Lockdown actually hadn't expected the second day to turn out the way it did.  The young and available ladies and gents of Pergamum had quickly found out that Swindle was not only bonded, but bonded to Lockdown.  The news was quickly sent from one communicator to another and within an hour it had hit the net.  That was the end of everything for Swindle who, after being flattened by refusal after refusal, had to retire to his room to figure out how his libido could possibly deal with this public relations nightmare.

First, he accused Lockdown of spreading "lies" that were actually the truth.  Swindle had already scraped off the embedded gold triangle on his spark chamber, or rather paid to have someone do it right after he'd come out of the required visit to the Public Signature Office.  Hadn't Lockdown done that? And if not, who had noticed? And after who, then why?

"Maybe I want to remember I'm hitched to a sludgeball like you," Lockdown said.

"A sludgeball? I've got only the finest oil running though my lubricant ducts this week, and now it's all wasted! I can sell sand to Jawas, but I can't sell a newly married mech to young singles," Swindle said.

"You can pretend I died suddenly and go into mourning.  You tried to sell me a fictionpad once that made that sound very romantic.  I can stay in the room jus'fine."

"Life isn't like romance fictionpads, and I'm not a young wistful prime on the moors of Kolkular."

"Certainly ain't.  On either count." Lockdown snorted, imagining Swindle all done up and gazing longingly at the horizon like the beautiful bot on the pad's coverpage.

Swindle sighed and flopped into a steelreed rattan chair.  He was recalculating again.  "I still have relaxing on the beach and going diving to look forward to.  The trip's not a total loss."

"And there's me," Lockdown said, standing still beside the vidscreen console.  He'd left his hook back on his ship.  Two hands.  Very unusual.

"There's you.  You don't go out carousing.  So how did the carousers learn about you?"

"I checked in.  I guess the check-in bot didn't like it when you hit on her again after she saw my passport."

"You updated your passport with the bond?!" Swindle sat up board-straight in the chair, purple eyes wide.

"We were at the Signature Office." Lockdown shrugged, eyes dim with disinterest.

"You USED your ACTUAL PASSPORT?!" Swindle's voice rose in volume and pitch.

Lockdown's eyes flared to life at this.  "How stupid do you think I am? I used a cover book.  I just updated more than one visa, like 'Dion's,' with my contact at the office.  You slagger," Lockdown turned his body away and lowered his voice precipitously at the last two words.  Swindle just fumed for a short while, tapping his upper left arm with the crossed-arm digits from his right hand.

"Why do you take this so seriously?" Swindle finally asked.  He still had a grim look on his face.

"A business deal's a business deal.  I thought you of all mechs understood that," Lockdown said flatly.  "I'm never gonna find anyone else to bond with anyway.  And you're not the only mech whose aliases can get sweet buffs from being bonded." He paused, and added drily, "I read the Peace Commemoration Bonding Act and Subsidiary Repopulation Interests too."

"Hmmf.  Well played, my friend.  I keep forgetting you can read." Amusement finally returned to Swindle's voice, and his eyes lidded happily.

"You'll forget that right after you forget a debt."

"Exactly." Swindle rose from the chair and padded over to Lockdown.  "And I owe one to you, isn't that right?"

"This isn't an entire day.  You've already used up the morning.  Wait for-"

Swindle's toe-top kiss silenced Lockdown.

"We'll have to make up for lost time," Swindle said.

Straining his feet to stand tall, Swindle clutched at Lockdown's broad chest for balance, and kissed the bounty hunter once again.  This time, Lockdown responded.  He trapped Swindle in his arms and devoured the smaller mech's mouth.  It almost didn't seem real, to be this wanted by someone so comparatively beautiful.  But Swindle had started this kiss.  That was enough for Lockdown to forget for a moment that he was second choice, and that the merch-mech had an ulterior motive.  For a moment, there was only soft murmuring and softer bio-alloy faceplates.

A tiny tongue touched between Lockdown's teeth then slipped inside.  Lockdown released a noise between a sigh and a growl.  His hands tightened.  His long prehensile tongue wrapped around the smaller one, stroking it and guiding it further in with a spiral motion.  Just what he'd do to a spike.

Swindle pushed against the mercenary with an unhappy mewl and returned his tongue to his mouth.  His feet flattened and soon Lockdown released him.  Swindle backed away, wiping at his mouth vigorously, and Lockdown's spark sank along with his faceplates.  He couldn't bother to hide the hurt now.

"I don't want sand inside me when we rub chassis," Swindle said, wiping his mouth.  He headed straight for the washracks.  Lockdown's head turned 180 degrees, following his partner's movement.

"Are we really doing this?" Lockdown asked warily.  That didn't sound like Swindle was calling the day off, yet.

"Yes!" Swindle shot back, annoyed, from the doorway.  "It's your turn in here next.  I want you MINT, M I S B.  Your mouth tastes like slag." The washrack door closed.

Waiting for Swindle to emerge, Lockdown had plenty of time to think.  Most of his thoughts were preoccupied with imagining the details of what Swindle was doing in the washracks, clever fingers working at seams, that whole bit, trying to get himself properly revved up.  But Swindle was taking a little too much time which led to some bad thinking, like the possibility that Swindle had to seriously rev himself up to even make this happen.  Then Lockdown thought about the same damn thing he always thought about when Swindle was one room away for twenty minutes and there weren't mods to ogle or steal.  How Swindle came along and just messed up his whole life.  Or rather his whole sex life.

Lockdown didn't give a scraplet how he looked on the outside, or on the inside for that matter.  He was a murderer, a thief, a serial maimer, a spark-sucker, and a patchwork monster by choice.  That dirtied his body and spark.  It also gave him great street cred, and a natural intimidation factor as others instinctively sensed something unnatural about him.  Something about a mech made up of stolen parts put prey and customers ill at ease.  Fearful mechs were easier to hunt.  Fearful mechs were easy to extort for good pay.  Fearful mechs made a great publicity service amid the world that sat hush-hush about its own existence.  Being a monster was good business.  Lockdown didn't really care about "original chassis" or any of that slag.

Trouble came in that other people cared about the looks of tar-sparked chimaeras with the occasional rusting or rubber-rotting component.  Lockdown was hyper-aware that because of the way he looked, EM-resonated, and smelled, that it was either pay for it or rape if he wanted to get laid.  And that created a minor hangup because he just wasn't the raping kind; he'd seen what that'd done to friends and family back in Tekkai, and he wasn't about to join the glowing Vosian ninnies at a monestary.  But all that was still not too bad, since Lockdown didn't mind option number one, paying, at all.  He got his money's worth with a bot who knew what they were doing, he'd say.  Plus it wasn't like he wasn't charming in his own way.  He'd gotten a few one night stands from barmechs and the occasional happy to be rescued hostage just by being himself.  The actual trouble was that Swindle was obsessed with appearance of all kind, and Lockdown had fallen for the avaricious slagger's appearances.

So the situation was, Lockdown reasoned with a deepening scowl, that he had a major hard-on for Swindle, and Swindle liked happy, pretty people.  And there Lockdown was, 365 days out of 366 left in the position of being the exact opposite of a happy, pretty person, and thus unable to attract the object of his lust and affection.  Swindle judged everyone else on their looks and social standing, but Lockdown fell through the cracks into the best customer zone.  Which was underneath the friend zone in the quagmire of Swindle not wanting to interact with Lockdown's introvertible organs with a ten foot pole, because the merchant knew exactly what horrific stuff was modded in there.

Only Swindle could make him think about words like beautiful and ugly.  Pretty much only Swindle talked about those concepts around him.  Swindle cared about the sanctity of his own body while still selling Lockdown mods and the occasional body part to make the bounty hunter even more of an aesthetic pariah.   Swindle talked about body parts like merchandise around Lockdown, only making it harder for him to still his engine before it revved, feeding into his macabre obsession.  Swindle had helped make Lockdown what he was.  They were already linked body deep.

Since they'd first met, Lockdown had always found Swindle physically attractive.  Very soon, he judged Swindle an interesting mech to talk to, and a fun mech to drink with after a big sale.  After dozens of purchases, a friendship snuck up on both of them.  Importantly, the hotness of Swindle's body and the affection towards him as a friend and dealer remained quite distinct to Lockdown.  He actively guarded against getting romantically attached.  It was one grain of wisdom he kept from the dojo, about how attachment led to suffering.  Especially with a spike attached.  Common sense, really.  And here he was, waking up one day to find he'd already fallen into the trap laid by his spark.

One day, Swindle's smiles were charming, especially the ones he gave by accident instead of the gleaming tradesman grins.  Lockdown actually remembered this quite distinctly, because Swindle had been smiling at something out of the blue, and Lockdown's spark had lurched in his chest.  After that one smile, he started noticing how nice Swindle's voice was to LISTEN to.  Then he noticed the little affectations of the merchant mech as if for the first time : like how his arms and neck bobbed wildly with laughter, the specific order Swindle liked to go through his inventory, the stageman's hands Swindle had when he was dragging things out of subspace, and Swindle's wide eyed thoughtfulness contrasting with hood-eyed complacency.  Then Lockdown started running hands over that gold and purple chassis in his mind's eye, or sometimes with his hands in the air when Swindle had his back turned.  Then he realised how many of Swindle's stories he knew, and how Swindle changed his speaking patterns around the larger mech.  More open, he said to himself, more laid back with familiarity. Yes, Lockdown realised, Swindle treated HIM differently! And that made his affection seem more like a blooming flower than the cancer it truly was.

Lockdown was afflicted with this fixation on Swindle, and he despised it just as much as he loved feeling the pain and longing it brought him.  A spark in love was a masochist, and that was more twisted than any amount of vivisected body modification.  Lockdown already knew that their essential natures made him and Swindle inseparable in business, and that fate had conspired to make them cling to each other socially after the war.  But Swindle didn't really notice.  Swindle noticed just enough to use himself as bait for Lockdown, still mocking the idea of anything developing between them for real.  Wag his aft for a free escort in the acid alleys.  Pose erotically during negotiations to drive the price up.  Kiss Lockdown's head and then pretend he's drunk or say he's just joking to keep the bounty hunter following him.  The disgusting part was that Lockdown let Swindle do it, even though he was fully aware of the farce.  He hated himself for allowing it.  He hated himself for wanting it to be real.

Because only Swindle did this to him.  Only Swindle.

Swindle walked out of the washracks, shining with wax.  He still dried off the little nooks and crannies on his frame with a small cloth, casting a lazy grin but a hawkish eye over at Lockdown who sat like a statue on the berth.  Lockdown figured that after all that thinking he'd been doing, he should speak.

"So, how you want me?" Lockdown asked.

"Clean?" Swindle said and shrugged, walking by just out of reach.

"I know there's scrap you'll be wanting me to take off.  Figured you didn't want t'see me reconfigure my internals in front of you."

"What a gentlemech," Swindle chuckled, leaning on the window and looking out at the deep blue crescent hanging in the sky.  The gaseous planet Thrax seemed like an immense drop of water rising from the ocean as it reflected the sun.  Thrax and the stars lit the hotel room in an azure twilight.  "I did some thinking in the washracks about that."

"Oh?" Lockdown easily made himself sound much less interested than he actually was.

"I'm thinking an entire store remodelling, for a bit of that Classic Brand feel," Swindle started, his voice warming up and getting into a nice groove to sell the idea.

"And?" Lockdown was having none of it right then.  He was going to use brusqueness to cover for nervousness.

"You still have a few bounties left on your ship.  The one you picked up on our way over ; so afraid of you he jumped.  The deskformer."

"Office Break." Lockdown supplied the name sourly.

The con was wanted on tax fraud, but not for a death sentence.  Still, the moment he'd seen Lockdown, the life drained out of those blue eyes, and he'd thrown himself off of the Solus Tower Building.  It was actually a clever way to preserve his secrets a little longer until the Elite Guard dragged his processor to a mnemosurgeon.  Problem was, when dead all of the con secrets could be read, unlike prisoners who could keep their silence.  Not so clever after all.

If Office Break had been smart, he would have tried to impale his processor, right through the chest.  Jumping wouldn't shatter it because Office Break had a very sturdy frame.  He had Swindle's frame.  And that was what Swindle was after.

"You slagging narcissist," Lockdown grumbled.  "You'll only go down with me if you're screwing yourself."

"Yeah, well, that's me," Swindle said with a flinch at his mouth and a strange straining in his voice.  The uncharacteristic words also caught Lockdown's attention.  Swindle was very nervous.  If the arms dealer hadn't lived through a war, he'd probably be shaking a bit.  Just in the hands.  Lockdown had seen that plenty during interrogations.  That was the vibe Swindle was giving off.

"I want everything changed out but your processor," Swindle ordered, keeping up his appearances.

"It's integrated into the thorax.  You'll have to make do." Lockdown tried to talk plainly instead of growl.  "Arms, legs, head, that I can do."

"Make sure to change your pygidium!"

"Facing equipment and aft," Lockdown restated with a gleam in his eye.

"I don't want to deal with your... thing yet." Swindle shook his hands in small annoyed sweeps and looked back.

It was obvious to Lockdown that Swindle just didn't want to deal with foreign interface equipment.  Though whether that was out of nervousness or whether it was an insult to Lockdown, he couldn't tell.  Was it pathetic that Lockdown still didn't mind fitting himself into a Swindle repaint as the price of finally sleeping with the mech? Swindle always had a price.

"Don't go anywhere.  I'm just getting him out of my suitcase," Lockdown said, walking out to the storage room of the suite.  Swindle's eyes followed the hodgepodge bot attentively.

"You brought him here?"

"I had t'work on somethin' while you were out busy carousing.  He's been in the cons since Galvatron's time.  Figured he'd have some sweet secrets tucked away in his servos." Lockdown soon returned, the dead and partially dissected body of Office Break over his shoulder.  "He must have been really early in your frame line."

"I was created just as it was going obsolete," Swindle said, summing up a much longer story about himself that Lockdown had heard many times.  Old and familiar was comforting right now.  "Old but reliable.  And so much more subspace friendly than modern carozzi models."

"And very moddable, if your personal arsenal is anything to judge by," Lockdown echoed past comments.  "Anyhow I'll be a few.  Try n' get comfortable." Before disappearing into the washracks with his corpse, Lockdown clicked and winked.  He caught a glimpse of Swindle's nervous twitch just before the door closed.  Worth it.

Lockdown's limbs dropped off like rotten fruit.  One by one, in a rotating six-hub wheel, he disconnected an appendage, and then held up Office Break's cannibalised parts with whatever hand he had left.  Cords, plugs, and tentacles shot out of his joints, drawing in the new body part and integrating it into Lockdown's additive-shot system.  His fuel lines were pumped full of anti-rejection chemicals and a stimulant, making his body as voracious as ever to install a new mod.  His old parts, mismatched and stolen, cluttered the tub in the washracks like a wastebin.  Finally, blindly, he ripped off his head with one arm and attached Office Break's with the other.  He could hear and feel the crackling, hissing, and wet sticky grinding of the sensory lines integrating to his thorax.  His eyes came online, growing from two cerulean slits to the limpid pentagons of a Swindle-like frame.  In the corner of his new strangely tinted vision, he saw the cables from his old head still squirming and leaking energon onto his old leg, searching for a body to call its own before its autonomic reattachment systems fell offline.  He smiled with Office Break's full mouth of perfectly polished teeth.

When Lockdown exited the washracks, smelling of the hotel's cleansers and clinical preservatives, Swindle was sitting on the berth in vehicle mode.  Lockdown rapped on the SUV's roof with his new giant hands.

"Takin' a nap?" Office Break's high voice said with Lockdown's usual self-assured drawl.

"I'm awake," Swindle answered before transforming back to his robot mode.  "What about you?"

"Real awake.  Like what you see?"

"Let's just say I'm looking sexy," Swindle laughed, taking in Office Break's grey and blue version of his body attached to Lockdown's green and black thorax.  The body's eyes were blue, and the neck had a tie detail instead of a bolo.  On the accountant, that was doubtless a boring hourglass shape of conformity and good social standing, but against the little bit of Lockdown that was left, it looked like an art piece.  "And you got an upgrade."

"So, how you wanna do this?" Lockdown slid onto the berth, tracing his fingertip around Swindle's hip light.

"Starting where we left off." Swindle pulled Lockdown down into a hot kiss, his plating fanned out and venting engine heat.

Lockdown kissed back, gaining control of the body by trial and error.  This tongue was shorter than he was used to, his hands much larger, and his crotch was inconvenient.  Still, he moved his lips and tongue in response to Swindle, pawed over the merchant's body in bountiful handfuls and giant squeezes, and ground their shield plates together, hip to hip.  His legs struggled for purchase, frustratingly weak, and hard to fit around Swindle's.  But he never gave up, their shared closeness and friction heating him up.

Swindle began nibbling along the navy blue rim of Lockdown's collar, and the hunter moaned and squeezed at the purple aft in his hands.  Swindle wiggled into the contact, engine revving when thumbs started to tease at his hip lights again.  But he knew this body better than Lockdown did, and soon enough the tides and positions turned.  Swindle teased under grey shoulder guards, licked along the tender blue lights of Lockdown's new arms, and massaged both windshields on the legs and Lockdown's old back expertly.  With a mix of sharp pinches, soft caresses, and hard clawing handstrokes, the bounty hunter's stolen body was reduced to molten need.  Lockdown's hips twitched and he sent order after order to do something about the plate that separated his crotch from Swindle's thigh.  His frustration fuelled a deep growl from Office Break's vocaliser, a volley of kisses to devour Swindle's wet pouting lips, and hans pulling at the mech's plating to crush them ever closer.  Then when Swindle reached around to swipe his fingers over Lockdown's valve cover, he was rewarded with a long moan speaking of want beyond words.

"Slaggit, Swindle," Lockdown let go of Swindle's mouth, resting his boxy head against Swindle's identical model.  His spark and field flared while the merchant felt up familiar plating from a novel angle.  "How do you open the damn front panel?"

"Try sucking in your waist while you send the command," Swindle purred, petting the interface plating slowly with soft sparks of charge digging in from his fingertips to the oversensitised metal.  

Lockdown grimaced, grunted, and then sighed in relief when the large grey front panel finally transformed up into his abdomen, and his interface covers folded up inside with the same motion.  Two of Swindle's fingers slipped inside Lockdown's slick valve, swirling around the soft plush folds of its dark and dripping outer mesh.  Lockdown moaned.  He grabbed Swindle's shoulders, vents shuddering.  Between their heated bodies, his spike met its mate.  A zing of pleasure shot up to his spark when he felt how hard and wet Swindle was in return.

"Turn around," Swindle commanded softly.

Lockdown pulled back wih a groan, looking down between them.  "Pretty thick." He wrapped his hand around Swindle's jack.  "Feels good too."

"Mmh, _you_ ," Swindle crooned as Lockdown let go and swivelled in his tight grasp.  When Swindle's chest pressed carefully under Lockdown's spiny back, he revved his engine hard.  Lockdown shuddered, then sighed when Swindle's fingers slid back in him.  This time, Swindle started a slow rhythm on muscle memory, in and out, with his knuckles curling just so they'd hit nodes he'd mapped in himself long before.  "I'm going to liquidate your funds until supplies run out."

Lockdown was too lost in lust to comment on the corny come-on.  Instead, he let Swindle lead his pleasure, melted to his very core with the messages of "good yes more" from his interface.  Just two of Swindle's thick fingers in Office Break's tight -possibly virginal for all Lockdown knew- valve were stretching it more than it seemed it could take.  Lockdown canted his hips into Swindle's shallow thrusts, chasing after the burning stretch that set his internal nodes on fire.  Behind him, he heard Swindle chuckle.  He turned his head to look in the mech's deviously lidded eyes, and in doing so, he only treated Swindle to the pleasure of seeing his new blue eyes open wide in tandem with a loud moan.  A third finger was now inside him.  The walls of his valve clamped down automatically, and their pressure of its internal platelets against the fingers and own nodes forced another moan from the body swapping bounty hunter.  Lockdown grabbed at Swindle's thigh and the berth below them.  His engines pumped fast.  His valve seeped with sweet-smelling lubricant.

A fourth finger entered Lockdown.  He whimpered, then squeezed again, then was unable to hold back more hisses and moans when the four fingers started moving.  He could hear how wet he was, squelching with every thrust and clench.  His cock ached, and dribbled lubricant dried cold as alcohol along its sides.  Looking down, Lockdown saw Swindle's wide fingers disappearing into him like plungers into an oil well, coming out coated in his thick fluids.  Swindle knew exactly and expertly what he was doing, with the experience of having done this to himself from just this angle many times before.  That explained why he'd manoeuvred Lockdown into his lap, with fingers coming into him and thumbs rubbing against him from the front, yet the bounty hunter couldn't care, and simply abandoned himself to pushing down against the fingers and running his hips in hard grinding circles against Swindle's knuckles, thumb, and hard pulsating jack that dug into Lockdown's back.  With a pounding pace, Swindle showed his partner where every pulsing node was, how to push up and massage the platelets deep inside Lockdown's valve, and how to stimulate the sensors and sensitive puffed up mech mesh around his port.

When Swindle's hand plopped out of Lockdown's port and pushed down between his stolen shoulderblades, it found no resistance.  Lockdown obeyed, flattening his green and black chest to the berth, and raising his grey and blue aft to the air with a whine.  The navy-blue mesh of his protective valve-lips was painfully inflamed and seeping glowing pink lubricant and preliminary transfluid.  Swindle cupped it with his big purple hand, then squeezed hard.  A triumphant smile slashed across his dark faceplates at how blazing hot the mound was, and how its mesh pushed out and dripped between his fingers, scalding like hot oil.  Swindle rubbed his thumb along the port's stiffened entrance, pressing and scraping at the glowing nodes there, up and down, up and down, squeezing, petting, squeezing.  Pressing.  Lockdown screamed.

As Lockdown came back online, he found himself still shuddering and weak, spike still engorged and aching, and Swindle's thumb still petting the outside of his port.  Primus, he felt just as revved up as before despite having, to his mortifying surprise, overloaded hard just from touch alone.  He pushed his hips backward, strength returning to him from his frustrated arousal and force of will that no amount of switched out body parts could strip from him.  Swindle's hand retreated at each push, denying his thick and tantalising thumb entrance to the valve that Lockdown so desperately wanted.  He heard chuckling.  Lockdown felt Swindle's hardness pressed against his aft plate and growled.

"Frag it, Swindle, just jack in already."

"I don't know, you seem to be having fun on the economy plan.  Why upgrade to deluxe when you can get off just like this?" Swindle' hand reached between Lockdown's bent legs and under his obscenely lifted aft to palm at his spike.  While the merchant's fingers encircled and squeezed the stiff pates, tubules, and glowing nodules of Lockdown's weeping cock, the rounded corner of his large lower arm aimed cleverly between Lockown's meshlips and rubbed there outside his valve.  Lockdown couldn't suppress a whine, but then bit Office Break's tiny tongue and began huffing hard and breathily groaning as he forced his hips into the hand and arm that painfully pleasured him, rutting the air.

Pit, he knew what Swindle wanted to hear, but he wasn't going to give in so easily.  He steadied himself up on his elbows, hands clenching steadfast into the berth, and started pumping his spike into Swindle's hand in earnest, ignoring his empty pleading port.  Swindle may have revealed his true colours as an unsung virtuoso of valve-play, but when it came to getting a quick one off on his spike, Lockdown knew he could get this borrowed spike to spurt just as well as his own.  The more he put his mind into it, seething and grunting into Swindle's fondling fingers, the more he felt his own technique coming back, hips rolling and snapping into the wet tunnel of Swindle's grip just the way he liked it.

"I'm gonna... Swindle, I'm gonna... gonna load..." Lockdown was glad that his face was pressed into the berth, or Swindle would have seen his slag-eating grin. He could feel victory coming on as he twisted Office Break's voice into a manly growl and slammed those hips down so hard they almost ground Swindle's hand into the berth.

Swindle let go.  Lockdown covered up the beginnings of laughter with a stuttering groan and loud exvents.  Right on cue, both of Swindle's thumbs were at his port, pushing it open.  Lockdown stayed very still as Swindle lined himself up, the bulbous tip of his spike pressing just barely inside the valve, its plates burning hot against Lockdown's own trembling heated lips.  He could just about feel Swindle's jealous gaze digging into his back.  There was no way the merch-mech was going to let him overload _twice_ before getting one for himself.  When Swindle pushed forward to the hilt, Lockdown's shout was one of triumph.

With how wet Lockdown was, Swindle wasted no time spiking his valve in a quick glide.  Swindle set a vigorous pace, thrusts steadied by wrapping his arms under and around Lockdown's shoulders.  They were locked together with loud clanking, loud cries, and even louder slick sounds from each thrust's liquid entry.

The bounty hunter's already stuffed valve clamped down even tighter after each stroke to some particularly sensitised nodes.  There were so many thrusts, and so much pressure and pleasure inside him, that Lockdown couldn't fight the moans and mewls that accompanied the sensation of his insides fluttering.  He felt like sucking Swindle in deeper, ever deeper, and rejoiced every time their hips met to the baseplate.

Up top, Swindle was enjoying his hands on salespitch, his own body shuddering and quivering like Lockdown's fragging tight valve.  He whimpered whenever his spiketip met the top node of the valve and it squeezed down like it'd never let go.  But it always did, the passage so slick, wet and yet chasing his spike with tight spasms.  Being close to Lockdown like this somehow felt right.  It was probably his mechormones talking, and the pounding of their hips, but hearing the hunter's growls turned to groans, and his swears turned to soft pleas... well, Swindle couldn't be blamed for pecking at Lockdown's cheek until their heads turned and lips met for a slow, loving kiss.

Since his pace slowed as well, Swindle's spike slipped out of Lockdown's valve, followed by a clench of valve muscles protesting the emptiness and a spurt of lubricant.  Swindle moaned in frustration into their kiss, and pressed his spike back towards Lockdown's aft, but only managed to smear their joined lubricants on the outside.  Lockdown was still rocking under him, so Swindle tightened his grip on the mech's shoulders and bit Office Break's suit-tie collar.

"Stay still," Swindle commanded, trying to line himself up again.

Lockdown rolled his shoulders and arched his back into a body roll, dislodging Swindle.  Before the salesmech could crash onto the berth, Lockdown caught him with one arm, simply repositioning him between newly spread legs.  

Swindle took a few seconds to plant his hands beside Lockdown's head and to take in the new position.  He was crouched over Lockdown's cannibalised body, on hands and knees, and below him that body's back was arching, its legs spread wide and drawn up, its pelvic armour drawn up, and its port pink, puffy, open and leaking.  And all below him radiated heat and an EM field thick with satisfaction, lust, and enthusiasm.  Swindle sank back into that body that looked so much like his own, and tenderly kissed those lips that tasted like his, and flared his field into that EM signature that could only ever have been Lockdown's.

The second joining started slowly, with mingled breath and moans, and arms wrapped around Swindle's torso, and legs around his waist.  Their hips seemed to move together, like a perfectly positioned piston into its jacket, lighting their engines ablaze with lust.  Both of their eyes were lidded in pleasure, closing when they kissed, and smouldering with a pleased glow when they parted.  It may have been Office Break's blue optics looking into Swindle's violet pair, but he could feel Lockdown's spark behind them, burning red and strong.

Then, their hips shifted just so, and Lockdown threw back his head with a cry.  "Faster!"

There was nothing Swindle could do but comply.  Soon, Lockdown was commanding from below : Faster, Harder, There, Yes! Harder! _Yes!_

"Slaggit, yes!" Lockdown shouted, his valve clamping down again as Swindle pressed into a node just to the left, his left, of his top node.  "You're so fragging good at fragging.  Who let you be this good?"

Despite how his ego and libido grew five-hundredfold hearing those words, and his spike may have grown as well for how it pulsated with pride and dug in deeper to elicit another curse of Primus' name down below, Swindle's tongue was strangely tied.  The most he could make come out of his wide, triangular, smiling mouth was the same thing he said to all of his conquests, "Don't sell yourself short, sweetspark."

When he kissed Lockdown, those words seemed somewhat awkward, even though Lockdown's field was blooming with a peculiar new type of pride.  Swindle flared lust in return and pushed a bit "harder" as requested to cover his newfound sense of awkwardness.  He stared at Lockdown's offlined optics while they kissed and afterward, as the force of their coupling kept the face so much like his own twisted up in mounting sexual tension.  It occurred to Swindle that he'd probably see his own o-face soon, not that he hadn't seen it in a mirror before.  But for a second he wondered what Lockdown's looked like, on the head he assumed was the mech's original one.  Probably ugly, and showing all of his dental plate that hadn't been knocked out yet.  And yet the thought of seeing that face, and hearing Lockdown's low smoky voice telling him how good he was, and having whatever monstrosity Lockdown called a jack trapped between their bodies instead of a navy blue and black copy of his own, all made Swindle's spark pulse with a strange longing.

Lockdown said Swindle's name, and the salesmech overloaded.

Swindle tried to talk about it the morning after, but Lockdown shut him out, back to the gruff bot who loved no one and had no time for affection.  He knew Swindle didn't mean the kind things he said, because Swindle was disingenuity incarnate.  Swindle's weary hands reaching to the window, and his light ex-vents in the vermillion dawn, were real.  They were the result of multiple overloads, like any spent lover, but they didn't mean he was in love.  Lockdown's black silhouette moved away from the red litten windowsill.  His red optics carried the dawn and its memories into the darkness behind Swindle.  Out of sight, out of mind, out of memory, the way it was supposed to be.


	3. We're going to regret this in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few time-skips this chapter.  The chapter proceeds in a linear fashion save for —emdash demarcated— flashbacks.  They hide the porn.  A Cybertronian week has ten days, and hours last for 100 minutes.

Swindle was drunk again.  It had gone, this ninth-day, how it always went :  


  1. Swindle had made a great deal, more often nowadays with companies as a middleman contractor than with private individuals,
  2. and he had gotten gussied up for a night on the town up in his lush penthouse,
  3. then he'd taken the elevator down to Lockdown's sporadically occupied planetside hole in the wall, since he knew from their shared appointment book that the bounty hunter would be there that night,
  4. and then he'd dragged Lockdown out to a bar where he danced and laughed and drank and picked up hot bots, and Lockdown footed the bill.



There used to be a step 3.5 where Swindle wheedled Lockdown into paying the tab.  Now it was assumed, routine, as predictable as Swindle losing the ability to walk and riding home on Lockdown's shoulders.

Drunk, Swindle babbled on about his bad luck in bedding the cherry red piece who'd eyed him across the bar.  She was hotter than a fusion canon, and just as dangerous, because he knew who her parents were.  So maybe, in the end, it was good luck he hadn't taken her home, or he'd have a prime at his throat, and the decidedly more deadly rest of his trine.  Never trust an ex-con with a scalpel.  That's what Swindle said.  So yeah, great thing he struck out tonight! Not gonna get scalpel-ed.  Too drunk anyway to do anything fun (by accident, of course) and he felt too comfortable draped over the back of Lockdown's sturdy neck to think about being anywhere else.  Too drunk anyway.

Lockdown's EM field burned, right in the frequency of where a nice strong spousal bond should be.  Yet, a big fat bond ringed his spark and pulsed in place, and it was echoed with trust and laughter from the smaller spark above it, but that old bond was the gnarled one of friendship neither of them had asked for.  It just grew one day like a weed.  It was watered with gasoline and spilled mech fluid, and fertilised with money.  So much ill-gotten money, sitting in banks.  Accruing a 15% interest with a loophole in the Peace Commemoration Bonding Act and Subsidiary Repopulation Interests.  Slag that law.  Slag the gold triangle stamped on his spark chamber.  Screw the one on Swindle's.  Screw Swindle.

"My place or yours?" They were passing through the front door of the way too ritzy apartment building.  Lockdown had to ask.

"I'm probably gonna purge my tanks in the morning, so yours," Swindle said with a bit of a slur.  Wouldn't be the first time.  Lockdown shrugged his shoulders a minute bit, and lessened the vice grip he had on Swindle's legs.

They'd both tottered back to the Death's Head.

"I've got a secret to tell you," Swindle whispered mischievously.  Lockdown bent down to hear at the crook of a black finger.  He grunted for the other mech to continue.  "My real name.  I mean, I bet you always wondered how a mech like me got saddled with a name like Swindle by my folks.  Coincidence, right?   Well it's not.  My real name.  It's Switchboard.  I was born Switchboard.  My parents wanted me to be an accountant, like my shinnnnmmzv—" After saying his initial designation, the light fizzled from Swindle's big violet optics and he fell right into recharge.

Lockdown made sure the small bot was far from the edge of the berth so he wouldn't fall off when he rolled around at night.  Swindle tended to do that.  Then the bounty hunter left the room to crash in his workshop, his grim expression unchanged.  He'd heard that story twelve times now.  The first time, he filed it untrue.  Then the civilian contracts after the war started, and people who had known little Switchboard popped up all over the place.  That meant Swindle was the special kind of drunk where he thought he was still a Decepticon on the run.  That kind of drunk always ended in morning purging, so it was funny that the purple-tan bot knew himself so well.  That joke accompanied Lockdown to sleep.

The next morning, Lockdown found half processed energon tantalisingly close to the washracks.  That was sweet.  Swindle'd tried.  Usually he just purged anywhere because of the leftover corrosion in his processor.  Because why care when there's a cleaning crew to take care of it?   And the cleaning crew had a skillet attachment for his forearm that made great clay and energon tarballs for cleaning a system out.  Tasty too.  Another fragging thing Lockdown had lost track of, because it was just easier to cater to Swindle on the deals they'd settled on long ago than renegotiate each time.  Looking in his reflection in the small pool of wash-water on his berthroom floor, Lockdown spared a second to disgustedly wonder when he'd gotten so domestic.

No.  His floor needed cleaning, and he might as well do it.  Swindle needed his tanks settled with some fresh cooked tarballs or he'd hike up his prices or start charging Lockdown's account again.  Swindle needed to go out and get overcharged like this for days after a big deal because that's what his public persona and the business partners who drank with him expected.  Lockdown needed to help it all run smoothly when he could because if he didn't, Swindle might get himself mugged, or offlined, and then who'd provide the ammo and mods?   With the war over, good ol' Swindle was the only arms dealer left this side of the galaxy.  Laypeople would call this a marriage of convenience.

Which was slagging Primus-fragging rust-scrap ten kremzeeks on a pogo-stick what it was.  For ten slagging years.  With 15% interest on a technically joint bank account.  17% if they found a third or had a kid.  Which wasn't going to happen before Unicron smiled because Swindle was absolutely happy with his sham of a marriage and the wonderful mech who was his best customer and his best friend and the one guy he could trust not to make it awkward.

Too bad it had gotten awkward for Lockdown.

Swindle was drunk, again.  He leant against Lockdown as they stumbled out of the bar again.  Lockdown was carrying him back to the Death's Head, and another night of purging and then sleeping alone again.  Just like the night before.  But he had to.  His clients expected social drinking.  So Swindle drank.  He drank and wheeled and dealed until his processors hit critical, at which time he'd eloquently excuse himself from his even more inebriated, or completely passed out, clients and totter over to Lockdown.  Then, as now, they'd heave themselves onto the dark yet glittering streets, and find their way to the ship.

Swindle started pulling on the ends of Lockdown's plating, flaring his field thickly.  Lockdown was pawing at the door scanner, and then they fell inside as their lips met.  Their bodies were barely visible in the airlock's dull red emergency light, but their eyes blazed crimson and violet, devouring each other in the darkness.

"I want you, I want you so bad," Swindle remembered saying, tugging at Lockdown's chest and abdomen, and kissing hard.

"You're drunk," Lockdown had countered.

"I don't care."

"You'll regret this in the morning."

"Mnnnn- don't care." Swindle suckled on one of Lockdown's hip spines, playing his tongue in a circle.  Lockdown's thighs trembled, but he still put a hand on Swindle's helm and pushed the smaller mech off.

"You've gone to sleep after worse.  C'mon, to the berth." Lockdown grabbed Swindle by the shoulder and dragged him to the berthroom— in the Death's Head.  Swindle protested and struggled : tonight would end like it always did when he was drunk, that he'd pass out on Lockdown's berth, and wake up the next morning to find himself untouched and Lockdown fallen asleep over a project in his workshop or sprawled on one of the operating tables.  And he really didn't want that, though he couldn't reason why.  He twisted out of Lockdown's grip, and then clung onto the bounty bot's back, chest rubbing up against the red windshield, and his hands grabbing licentiously at Lockdown's aft and groin.

"No.  I want you! I want you bad, Lockdown, why don't you notice?" Swindle couldn't think of why he was begging like that.  Was he that drunk?

"Why don't I notice?  Why don't YOU notice?!" Lockdown shot back with years of frustration.  "Oh Primus-" Lockdown's hips twitched when Swindle rubbed two fingers in a circle pressed hard over his port cover.

"You sure about this?" Lockdown asked, grabbing onto Swindle's thigh behind his own.

"I already purchased these goods, didn't I?" Swindle grabbed the entire crotchplate suddenly.

Lockdown moaned, and then painfully sucked in his field.  "No.  Get off."

Lockdown deposited Swindle on his berth and went to sleep in his work room again.  In the morning, Swindle had a greater hangover than ever before, his processor fuzzy all over with static cling.  Lockdown's tarballs had helped, but Swindle played sick and argued that he had no appointment to go to that day until the hunter had acquiesced to letting him stay.  Neither of them mentioned the night before.  Lockdown just locked up all of his mods and weapons with personalised encoders, gave Swindle the meaningful stink-eye, then locked the drawer of cygars too.

Swindle did a lot of thinking that day as he lay alone smoking cygars in Lockdown's work room all day.  The other mech was absent at a police station, leaving only his scent behind, and the grease and transfluid stains on the walls.  Forever there.  The same configurations as always, dancing until they dripped into hardened paintstrokes.  Swindle realised how many times he'd stared at those walls while his spark ached.  He couldn't fathom why Lockdown had refused him after sounding so very ready to give in.  Did it have to do with mentioning their marriage?  The only marriage that pushed two mechs apart.  

He put his hand to his heated spark chamber.  He'd done a lot of that thinking business, and the last cygar was gone in a room of white smoke, and white smoke alone.  His spark was left burning instead.  Happy memories fed it.  Swindle breathed in a mouthful of white and exhaled around the word for his happiness and pain in one : Lockdown.

Swindle was drunk again.  He had gotten drunk on purpose, and then pestered Lockdown, and then the berth room door had shut on him.  That was annoying.  And now Lockdown hated him.  And Lockdown hated him more for drinking again the next day, in the morning.  He could tell from the sharp tone the bounty hunter's words carried all day, and his thin red eyes under darker thick brows.  Then, at night, he was sober, and still not out of Lockdown's ship.

They'd broken open a few cans of oil, seated in the oblong room full of slate cushions, the energon dispensers, and a sturdy crate, and gotten to talking and arguing.  Lockdown started polishing a backpack thruster, and Swindle balanced his books for a while.  But soon covering up embezzlement became too boring, and Swindle started asking questions instead.  Calculated ones that were behind why he needed all this money.

"Why do you like carozzis?" Swindle asked.

That was an unexpected question.  Lockdown stopped polishing.  "What."

"It's a word.  In a language you may speak called Iacon-Cybertronian, means mid-class vehicle with thick armour and a nice revving engine.  You may know one talking to you right now," Swindle prodded with a knowing drawl.

"Rnnf.  Don't play coy, I know what you meant," Lockdown snapped.  "Why do you like those high-voiced little hourglass shaped racing models?"

"Well that's a stupid question."

"Teacher teach thyself," Lockdown attempted a paraphrase, but Swindle just laughed.

"Ohhh, buddy, you know I'm just, I'm just joshing with you."

"I don't get the joke."

"The joke's Prowl.  You think I wouldn't know, hmm?   Think I'm too drunk to bring it up?" Swindle leaned over, eyes hazardously half lidded with the promise that Swindle knew everything.  And everything came with a price.

"No, you're exactly drunk to bring it up." Lockdown didn't care about this laughable blackmail.  "Ain't done nothin'.  You wouldn't be able to hold it against me if I did.  The kid needed someone to teach him.  Why not me?"

"Oh.  'Kid' now?" Swindle kept staring over the laced fingers under his chin, unfazed.  "You're so close.  You know, I've seen you 'looking' at pictures of him, when you think I'm not around.  But listen : I've got you under contract.  You're my bondmate."

Lockdown rose, shaking his head.  "I don't wanna even think about how blitzed you are to be jealous of a dead mech."

"Jealous?   I'm protecting an investment!"

"You know what you are, Swindle?" Lockdown shouted, standing.  "You're nothing but a giant spike, lusting after valves and money.  And it doesn't matter which one you're after tonight because someone's gonna get screwed over.  Screw you, Swindle."

Lockdown kicked his favourite kicking-crate to the wall and strode past Swindle to the door, almost alight with his anger.

"Screw me?" Swindle raised his voice, standing too.

"Yeah, frag you," Lockdown called from the doorway.

"You've already fragged me!"

"Once!"

"Once was enough—" Swindle started, only to get cut off by Lockdown, even louder and more bitter.

"Yeah, once was enough of me for your entire lifetime."

"No, frag you, listen to me!" Swindle yelled right back, and stomped over to Lockdown, following him out into the _Death's Head_ 's main hallway.  Lockdown walked faster.

"Frag you, listen to _me_ , you piece of scrap!" Lockdown aimed his hook behind him without even looking, and jettisoned it into Swindle's shoulder.

"Oh, fine, you want to talk like that?" Swindle growled and grabbed onto the hook's chain.  "Then I'll translate myself so you can understand : I want you to frag me into the ground so hard I can't even reboot.  I want you to fill my mouth and my needy port with so much transfluid, I'll be building a protoform for twins.  I want to milk you for so many overloads, you'll change-"

Lockdown turned around.  "Twins?"

Swindle was silent.

"I never took you for a munidor," Lockdown said, and with a snap he spooled his hook, whisking the chain from Swindle's hands.

"I'll have to be.  You removed your gestation chamber to install a VTOL engine for your wing-mods," Swindle noted, his eyes lidding happily.

Lockdown smirked.  "That I did."

Swindle woke up feeling the most relaxed he had ever been after drinking.  He felt like every piston, actuator, and servo was loose and well oiled.  He was running at peak performance, and had the long lasting buzz of a deep massage warming his plating.  In the white light from his false-window, he felt like a precious and beautiful pool of liquid hydrogen.  He felt like riding this spark-deep warmth into heat and getting into another friendly tumble with whoever he'd brought home.  But they never stayed.  Still, he felt like a million bucks.  It made him roll and shiver luxuriantly, down from head to toe, before he noticed that there was a detached arm sitting under the window.

When the window view switched from a white-light white-sand beach to a gloomier jungle scene, Swindle's headache finally began.  Apprehension raced up Swindle's struts, from foot to neck, then pierced into his processor.  He knew that he wasn't alone.  And he had a terrible idea of who it was.  Reluctant to face reality, he slowly turned over to face the larger mech behind him.  Swindle stiffened, and quickly primed his pistons to evacuate the berth.  The movement triggered an almost instinctual reaction from Swindle's unwanted berthmate, and Lockdown snapped awake.

After an uncomfortable microsecond of tension and bearings-getting, Lockdown melted into a happy, sated smile.  Swindle froze in the spot, watching the other carefully.  Just exactly what had they done?  And why couldn't he remember?  He'd definitely drunk too much, and probably a bit more.  There was a guy pushing turbo shots and oil chargers at the party, but Swindle thought he knew better than that.  He'd never do that stuff without loosening up a customer.  He needed to be in his right mind to start getting out of it.  Lockdown always stopped him from being an idiot.  Or from getting too drunk, or at least the lug would drag him home before he purged in front of important people.  Swindle swallowed around dry intake tubes and massaged his face with an open palm.  They relied on each other too much.  Honesty, Swindle, you rely on Lockdown to police your own drinking too much when he isn't exactly a teetotaler, Swindle reprimanded himself.  The merchant bot looked back at Lockdown.  Only a few seconds had passed, and now Lockdown had a gapped tooth grin.

Lockdown sat up, starting to roll out his joints.  He checked the room by habit, head swivelling in precise movement.  Then he turned back to Swindle, and spoke.  His gravelly drawl was sweet and slow as black-strap.

"Glad you finally got the courage to tell me y'want me, sober." Lockdown reached out carefully with a blue right hand and ran a soft thumb over Swindle's cheek.

Swindle couldn't respond to that.  He didn't recall being in his right mind.  He didn't recall much.  But he was caught off guard by the action for only a second before batting the arm away.

"Don't give me that look.  You know how you are." Lockdown regarded Swindle's worry for a second, then shrugged, and tried his best to beam a genuine smile.  "Gettin' drunk and waving your aft in my face for favours.  I shoulda known it was all a game." Lockdown vented a contented "that's that" sigh and clacked his plating tight in place, still smiling contentedly.  Swindle stayed frozen when the other mech's red eyes magnetically locked on his frame again.

"You look a bit tense.  Recharge bad?" Lockdown asked.

"I must have slept on my arm," Swindle lied, playing at his right arm being locked up.  The fact that he felt more than fine was something he wouldn't deal with right then.  He was wracking his processor still to remember what had gotten him so "relaxed" the previous night.  What gave his hips that smooth lubricated roll as he turned his legs and attempted to slide off the berth.

"I can fix that for you," Lockdown purred, and rolled closer to Swindle, catching the merchant by the shoulder flaps.  He craned his head down to Swindle's neck, invading and presuming.  "You smell like a boiling supernova.  How 'bout I suck you off before we have to go back to work?  Work out those —kinks." Lockdown flicked his fingers on Swindle's right arm, the tone in his voice letting on that he could see a faked injury when he saw one.

Swindle's body may have been sluggish, but his processor was on fire, and churning thoughts in a battle against the pain growing there.  The previous night was a blank, but he'd obviously interfaced with Lockdown.  Swindle wouldn't have been terribly inclined to do that, if he'd been asked the day before.  Swindle was all too aware that Lockdown had a strong but absolutely unvocalised interest in him, something he was happy to use to his advantage, but which still lay buried under their professional relationship.  Or their friendship.  It was hard to tell which was which sometimes, but they both knew that a romantic relationship was off the table.  Or so Swindle had thought.

Pharmaceutical acquisition logs did not illuminate any substance Swindle had ever taken or traded in that could make him hop in berth with Lockdown, of all mechs.  There were some clean burning highgrade additives that could nix the unsightly side effects of an overcharge, and those that would zap inhibitions faster than a laser scalpel, but nothing he knew of would cause him to say yes to someone he really wasn't physically attracted to.  Not when money wasn't involved.  Lockdown's words and actions were implying that Swindle had—

"Come on, get a taste of these unopened goods!" Swindle heard himself saying, a memory floating across his processor like thick hydrocarbon mist.

"I doubt that," Swindle heard Lockdown respond.  He remembered their chuckling and hands on the smooth headlights at his hips.  He remembered shivering.

—He was shivering, again.  It was stupid to turn down a free blow job any way, no matter the mech.  Lockdown was logically still riding some emotional high from finally getting his living trophy, so he wasn't asking anything from Swindle in exchange.  An actual freebie.  Swindle nodded.

"We're not responsible for what happens on the premises before business hours," Swindle said, and spread his thighs, which fell open heavy and easy and eager.  Some lubricant leaked out from his seams and ball joints.  Primus, he was still more ready than he'd thought.

"Yeah, thas' funny," Lockdown commented with a distracted but highly pleased leer before his head sunk down.

He was entirely too good at this, Swindle thought.  It had taken only a few curling licks and long hard sucks for Lockdown to bring out Swindle's spike, and thereafter the bounty hunter's mouth had transformed into a machine for turning Swindle on more and more.  The tongue and throat moved over his spike with rollers and soft wetness.  Springy rubber, and slick but smooth steel, and tangles of tubes and wire, and the liquid fire of energon nodes warred to get Swindle's attention, each striving to be his spike's favourite texture.  But Swindle couldn't choose.  He could only buck his hips and mumble, throwing out price assessments for each trick when his rational thought was truly gone.  Things clamped tight around him, and drew him in deeper, and Lockdown's lips knew how to be perfectly hard or soft too, still forming a perfect seal to suck with.  Swindle's thighs trembled, and he panted loud around high little cries, and his large hands were on Lockdown's neck spines.  And the tongue was wrapped all the way around him at least twice, and his tanks were leaking early transfluid, and his eyes were dimmed and half lidded and asking for more.  And that tongue was now ribbed and pulling him through pressure-pleasure sucking lubricant better than fingers ever could, and Swindle's backstrut stiffened stronger than steel as it readied to explode into looseness and letting go—

—and Swindle cried out in climax for the eighth time that week.  Lockdown swallowed down the thick transfluid and lubricant, then slid off Swindle's spike with a wet pop.  He stood and wiped off his mouth, then licked off the small opalescent line left on the back of his burgundy left hand.  Swindle watched, still catching his breath, and preparing himself for what had to come next.

The first time had been a freebie, but now it was an exchange.  How could Swindle refuse when getting oral from Lockdown turned out to be better than screwing a platinum pleasure bot?  Every suck was an act of love, and Lockdown never complained if Swindle got grabby, or pushy, or hard and demanding.  With a mouth like a valve, though Swindle hadn't yet ruled out Lockdown having installed a valve in there, getting into that head could be as intense and drawn out as "real" interfacing.  Sometimes against a wall, sometimes laid out on a berth, sometimes seated behind his own desk, and sometimes cramped on the floor or in a far too small supply closet.  Fast, slow, it all depended on what Swindle wanted.  If Lockdown was around, and no one else was, he never said no.  The only thing he'd asked, suggested really, was that Swindle maybe give back a little.  Swindle knew enough to know that a suggestion like that was a demand.

He'd still been caught off guard by what was even happening in his life, and he still didn't fully remember the one night that had started it.  He wasn't going to let any of that stop him from making a deal.  Deals made things official : business.  Swindle liked business.  He could fit his spike into business.  A simple exchange.  Like in any business deal, Swindle aimed to get as much as he could, and give less than what he was comfortable with.  Armed with the truth that he really didn't know what to do with another mech's spike, Swindle named his payment.

"I can give you a handjob," Swindle had said, his tone the first time stiff, but covered by a certain acceptable aphasia after overload.  He'd convinced himself he could touch the thing.

Now, almost a week after the first forgotten night that had started whatever this was, Lockdown leaned back against the inner hull of his ship and waited for the handjob he expected, that look of satisfaction infecting his faceplates again.  Swindle heaved himself out of the hunter's pilot chair on wobbling legs, then leant on Lockdown, resting his forehead on the broad green chest.  At first, he'd tried to stand far from the other mech, but it'd hurt his arm to beat off at that angle.  It was easier to get right next to his subject, and tug leisurely.  Lockdown tried not to touch back, and Swindle supposed it was because of the way he'd tense up.  Still, a hand or claw would always come to settle on Swindle's hip or back, forcing the economic exchange to become intimate.  Hearing his own name shouted or whispered—

"Swindle, Swindle," Lockdown had chanted, thrusting in and out of a valve so wet the berth felt like a sea.  That was what had made the dried puddle Swindle had cleaned the next day, he realised.  He felt so open in the memory, and it was like Lockdown's spike belonged in him.  His body was accepting it so well.  His valve had fluttered and then spasmed with a strength of grip that had surprised him.

"How long have you wanted me?" Lockdown had asked.

"Vorns," Swindle had answered and clenched his valve again.  He couldn't remember if that was a lie or not.  Lockdown had thrust harder, and Swindle had laughed in pleasure.  Their fingers had been entwined.

—Swindle could melt into Lockdown's heat, and forget a while.  The mechanical pleasure routine his hands fell into let his mind wander in blackness, and from there, he could reconstruct scenes from his lost night.  The smell and resonance of the larger mech helped, since most of the memories were thrown over Lockdown's shoulder, or slumped against him for balance.

Every new memory filled in that night like a decoding diffusion filter.  Swindle could remember the interfacing almost completely now, like a memory burned into his body and accusing him from his valve.  He wasn't a valve mech.  He swore he wasn't.  He hadn't bared it for anyone except Dead End who'd bought his valve's virginity.  Dead End had spent the entire time likening Swindle losing his seal to losing his worth, broken spent cubes devoid of life-giving energon, countries and towers conquered and torn to the ground, and rotten fruit.  All in sonnets of perfectly scanning iambic pentameter.  It had hurt.

Lockdown had filled him lovingly, played with him first, and been just rough enough to keep up Swindle's interest.  They'd sparred with words, though those were the things that it was hardest for Swindle to remember.  Lockdown had given and taken, and treated interface like it was supposed to be fun, and he hadn't said a stinking word of poetry—

—"You with me?" Lockdown asked, flicking Swindle's aft.

Swindle startled out of a light recharge.  He looked down and saw his hands settled between Lockdown's legs where the length had been tucked away.  His hands were covered in transfluid, though he couldn't recall finishing his partner.

"I'm fine," Swindle lied.

"You ain't fine," Lockdown said.

Swindle didn't have the energy to argue that, and that in itself was distressing.  "I think I need to see a medic."

Lockdown tensed, and his tone got less harsh.  "Is it your tank?"

"My what?" Swindle rubbed his faceplates with his fingers, large violet eyes closed.

"Your gestation tank?  I heard it can cause blackouts cause it's next to the main—"

"What?! No!" Swindle backed up, eyes now quite wide open.  Lockdown's voice was way too sympathetic right then, and his touch too soft.  Swindle saw confusion knot between Lockdown's eyes.

Swindle gathered himself up, pulled in his plating to look professional, and walked out of the room.  "I have an appointment at 5:80."

"Cancel it," Lockdown said, his voice hard.  The large spiny mech had followed the small merchant step by step.

"I can't just cancel it!"

"You're sick.  What if you drift off during a sale?  If you don't want to spend the money, I'll pay the slagging doctor."

"Oh, right, because you think I want you to pay for everything!" Swindle started wandering around his study, looking for something to busy himself with to get the other to leave so that he could think.

"Scrap, you're being difficult today," Lockdown muttered.  "Look, I can get in touch with Quickfire.  He's no repromedic, but he can give you a magnetic scan to make sure nothing's crimped up down th—"

"No! Shut up!" Swindle shouted, almost screamed, throwing his hands up.

"Don't you dare—" Lockdown's eyes slit, and genuine anger roiled up in his EM field.  Swindle curled in on himself, and brought his hands up to protect his subspace portal.

"Lockdown.  I need to go to a mnemosurgeon," Swindle admitted, voice small.  Lockdown's anger evaporated, and the room fell silent.


	4. I wanted to have a shelfwarmer?!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short and fluffy. Lots of porn next chapter.

At 5:80, Swindle's appointment with the Department of Coastal Security had been cancelled and he and Lockdown were sitting in the office of Webwork, a young and inexpensive general medic trained on Earth.  Webwork wasn't any sort of medic name, Swindle had argued, but he couldn't argue against her prices, or her charming voice that put Lockdown on edge.  
  
Webwork quickly got the carte vitale from her main patient, a gold and purple carozzi named "Office Break," and uploaded his medical information from his public registry.  The only information not listed was his obvious recent paintjob.  Switching from blue and grey to gold and purple was probably indicative of a large life event, she thought.  
  
"What brings you to the clinic, Office Break?" Webwork asked Swindle.  
  
"I have trouble remembering things, and it's putting my business on hold.  Just this morning I had to cancel an appointment with the DCS!"  Swindle complained, gaze dancing over a small collection of spider-shaped toys holding tiny medical instruments that sat above a cabinet for the mech-sized instruments.  
  
"Because you missed it?  Or was there pain involved, like a headache?"  Webwork asked calmly.  
  
"No, because he forced me to cancel it and come here," Swindle said with a shrug of his shoulder that was closest to Lockdown.  The bounty hunter snorted out of his back vents.  
  
"You were in one of your funks," Lockdown said.  
  
"Funks?" Swindle asked, eyes darkening.  
  
"Fugues," Lockdown tried another word.  
  
"Fugues," Swindle repeated, not impressed by the word or understanding its use there.  
  
"Things where I have to do THIS to you."  Lockdown flicked his fingers on the grill of Swindle's forehead, causing the car's eyes to snap shut with a mewl.  
  
Swindle rubbed at the hit spot, eyes carefully opening.  "Don't do that."  
  
"It gets you t'pay attention."  Lockdown was smiling, overly happy with himself and the little noise Swindle had made.  
  
"If I may ask why _you're_ here?" Webwork cut in, turning the attention of her four eyes to Lockdown.  He straightened his posture, frown returning.  
  
"I'm a bondmate," Lockdown said.  
  
"Office Break's file doesn't mention a bonding."  
  
Swindle and Lockdown exchanged comically wide, knowing grimaces.  
  
"How long ago was this?"  Webwork prompted.  
  
"Let's just say a while," Swindle said smoothly.  
  
"Are you aware that if you registered your bond, you'd be eligible for the Peace Commemoration Bonding Act and Subsidiary Repopulation Interests?"  
  
"Gee, Doc, what's that?"  Lockdown asked in a loud sing-song.  Swindle lightly kicked his right leg's exhaust ports.  
  
"We're aware,"  Swindle said.  "But what's important is my processor."  
  
"Yes," Webwork quickly agreed.  "Do you have any aching in your processor, or overly-loud calculations."  
  
"I've puttered all my life.  It's part of the frame-type."  Swindle shrugged, referring to the loud sound of his processor's percolating calculations when he ran them too quickly.  "It never hurts."  
  
"Backaches?"  
  
"Occasionally, at the end of a marathon sale."  
  
"Any pains in your neck?"  
  
"Other than him?"  
  
"Any feeling of internal fluid, or sloshing sounds?"  
  
"None."  
  
"How often does this happen?"  
  
"Now that is a million dollar question, Webwork!  How often does it happen, sweet-fumes?"  Swindle asked Lockdown with a sarcastic epithet that delightfully made the mountain of a mech's eyes slim.  
  
"Mn.  I see you glaze off for several seconds every few days, but the minutes-long fugues happen at least once every ten-day."  Lockdown said, his plating tightening around his body.  
  
Swindle's mouth flinched.  That was worse than he'd been personally aware of.  
  
"Your processor could be having localised micro-siezures.  I don't see anything in your history that would point to that, so they could be aggravated by an outside factor," Webwork explained, noticing her patient's newfound distress.  He'd been concerned about his health earlier, but more as an annoyance, it seemed.  Now, he looked truly put-upon. She went back to his chart, looking over the usual suspects.  
  
"Do you smoke cygars?"  
  
"On occasion."  
  
"What about highgrade?"  
  
"At least twice a week."  
  
Webwork updated Office Break's records, rather surprised and concerned.  The mech had been quite abstemious before.  "Has anything important happened recently, like a lifetyle change?  New job, or a change in energon, or a personal loss?"  
  
"Other than this morning's loss?  Other than the loss in my memory?  No, I haven't been doing anything differently."  
  
"Are you sure?  Your records don't mention cygars or highgrade."  
  
"I probably lied," Swindle said with a sly smile.  He bet that Office Break hadn't been as tight laced as those records said.  It gave him a certain satisfaction to let the mech's medical profile live a little, posthumously.  "But really, Webwork, I've been fine, other than being unable to remember things, and losing blocks of time."  
  
"He _did_ start interfacing regularly," Lockdown stated.  
  
"Loc- _you!_ " Swindle sputtered, eyes burning bright lavender.  
  
"I'm telling you, it's probably your lines down there getting crimped.  By my more than generous endowments."  
  
"Are you the doctor now?" Swindle snapped.  
  
"Are you sparkbonding regularly as well?" Webwork asked, trying her hardest not to judge the two mechs or get caught up in their quarrel.  
  
"No. I don't think so."  Swindle looked to Lockdown, uncertain.  
  
"No," Lockdown confirmed.  
  
"So you're not trying to kindle," Webwork posited.  
  
"I never said that."  Lockdown crossed his arms.  "Supposedly we are."  
  
"I wanted to have a shelfwarmer?!"  Swindle burst out.  
  
"Yeah.  And I kept telling you me giving you head's not gonna help with that,"  Lockdown snorted, red eyes brightening in sarcasm.  
  
"I don't know why.  I don't even remember why I _would_ want a kid."  
 ****"Twins," Lockdown corrected.  
  
"Yes, I remember _saying_ that, but... why would I decide to sacrifice time and money to a chestburster?"  
  
"I'd love to hear why, too,"  Lockdown said, his sardonic tone belying his overwhelmingly honest interest.  
  
"I... can't."  Swindle leaned back, his black helm hitting the examination room wall.  
  
"Have you sparkbonded in the past year?" Webwork interjected.  
  
"Yeah," Lockdown said, daring a glance at Swindle, who had his pretty eyes closed.  
  
"Could you lay back on the berth, Office Break?"  Webwork got up to stand by the examination berth.  Swindle complied.  "I need to scan your abdomen."  
  
"You're not going to read my spark," Swindle said nervously, looking at the pan-shaped scanner Webwork took out of the overhead cabinets.  
  
"No, just your interface components and lower spine.  Could you transform your crotch guard?"  
  
A comment about doing that for free was on the tip of Swindle's tongue, but he bit his lip and silently complied.  The pan-shaped scanner set right on his protoform.  There was a bright flash, and then Webwork pulled up the results with two of her arms.  The scan hung holographic in the air as a third of her arms manipulated it.  She dug through the wires as if she were inside, finally pinpointing the layers of the scan that were of interest near the top of the scan.  She played around with the 3D views of one section for a minute or so.  
  
"It looks like you have a severe pinch on five of your data relays, with evidence of a small bleed.  I'll need to scan further up."  Before Swindle could protest the scanner getting closer to his spark and subspace compartment, Webwork had aimed a flash at the processor near the bottom of his chest, and was digging through the images.  "Yes, there's a tiny bleed, and major crimping.  You'll need cyber cirugery to patch the bleed and then pin the relays."  
  
The minute Swindle sensed Lockdown's plating and field flaring with satisfaction, Swindle raised a thick arm and pointed indignantly.  "Not a word!"  
  
"I can refer you to a proper cirugeon," Webwork said, rummaging through the scans again.  She was looking in the centre-front of the abdominal section, lips pursing.  Her top lenses zoomed in and out as the bottom pair of eyes scanned again and again.  "Also, you may be building a protoform."  
  
"What!  You must be joking with me, Webwork.  Are you implying that I managed to spark Frankenbot's monster?"  Swindle sat up suddenly.  
  
"It's highly possible.  You know..."  
  
"It only takes one merge, of course, I've heard it a hundred times!"  Swindle jumped off the berth, gesturing dramatically.  His flat feet hit the floor with a heavy clank.  "I don't have the insurance for this!  They gouge you for children.  No respectable businessman would be on the other end of that old racket.  I should have..."  Swindle turned around sharply, and knocked into the berth, wincing.  He fell back onto it, eyes twisted shut, and fingers curling.  Then, the lights went back on, and he exhaled deeply.  He looked around the room, taking stock of his situation.  
  
"So, what's the diagnosis, if you could state it for me again in layman's terms?"  Swindle asked in a polite voice.  
  
"You, erm, appear to be growing a protoform in your gestation chamber," Webwork said.  
  
"What!  You must be joking with me, Doctor.  Are you implying that I managed to spark Frankenbot's monster?"  Swindle sat up again.  
  
"Yeah, it's even better the second time," Lockdown groused, shoulder and arm plating ruffling.  
  
"It's highly likely.  Since you sparkbonded with..."  Webwork started to speak but was cut off by Swindle.  
  
"It only takes one merge, of course, I've heard it a hundred times!"  Swindle threw up his arms, and hoisted his legs back off the berth.  "I'm glad I finally finagled a good insurance policy off of Boltcutter.  Is that all, Doctor?"  
  
"Wait," Lockdown put out his maroon hand before Webwork could respond, her scans already displaying between her upper arms.  "Swindle, what's her name?"  
  
"Lockdown, are you implying that I do not know the doctor's name?  How could you?"  Swindle put a hand over his spark and lidded his eyes huffily.  
  
"Yeah.  I'm implyin' it."  Lockdown's eye ridges lowered.  "What's her name?"  
  
Swindle's eyes started to wander, and Lockdown quickly positioned himself between Swindle's line of sight and Webwork's nameplate.  The merchant mech ruffled his plating and exvented harshly.  The two glared at each other.  
  
"Office Break, I need to run a second scan.  Please stay very still," Webwork ordered, her mind racing to the same place as Lockdown's.  After another flash from her scanner that sent Swindle to blinking, Webwork dug through the scan until she exposed the site at his main data relays she'd examined earlier.  "There it is," she said with wonder.  She brought up the earlier scan, and placed the two next to each other, pinning their projections to the wall.  
  
"If you look here," Webwork said and pointed, "you can see the pinching alleviated from four of the five relays.  And here you can see some loose carriage pieces, and this transistor box no longer pressing up from top.  These pieces would be utterly benign if the valve and gestation chamber hadn't been activated and strengthened, and, erm, displaced north a bit.  Normally the organ takes up as little space as possible, with a soft top.  But since there's a protoform building to fill up the chamber's limited space, it hardens.  So these remnants of a bad mod job, and whatever mod has that transistor box are only now interacting with the gestation chamber to pinch off your relays.  That's what's causing the bouts of amnesia.  It's classic Pergamum Syndrome."  
  
"Well truss me up and call me a technoturkey," Swindle marvelled.  "Is it reversible, Doctor, ah, you'll forgive me for not remembering your name?"  
  
"Webwork," the doctor supplied.  
  
"Webwork," Swindle echoed.  "My processor's not fractured, is it?"  
  
"Not at all.  Once a cirugeon, a real one, fixes your mod and relays, there will be no more pinching, and your processor will synthesize all of your memories together.  It's not that there's two of you, but rather that the blockages seal off parts of your hard drive modules at a time.  It's a simple matter of not having read access to those memories.  It's actually quite common for mechs who have been reconfigured to develop a protoform that's two or more class sizes too large."  
  
"I'm growing a tank inside an SUV?"  
  
"I don't think so.  I'd have to scan your bondmate's spark to confirm the new spark's size class.  But based on the visual inspection of your chamber here, nothing seems amiss.  The real problem is this mod here."  Webwork pointed.  
  
"Not my subspace,"  Swindle moaned.  
  
"That's a subspace pocket?!  But it's so large, at least a storage dimension link.  How did you..."  
  
"Trade secret, Doctor.  And not one I'm willing to part with, metaphorically or physically."  
  
"You'll hafta at least let the doctor bolt it up with a scaffold," Lockdown said, sitting down on the berth loudly next to Swindle, as if his bulk could intimidate the merchant into doing something sensible.  "You can't _afford_ to keep forgetting things."  
  
"I just need to buy myself some time.  I know what I'm doing.  I can get a loop scaffold in until it's time for the shelfwarmer to go on sale."  Swindle winked.  
  
"Then you're okay with it?"  Lockdown asked warily, knocking on Swindle's chest.  
  
"It was my idea, wasn't it?"  Swindle beamed, kicking his legs lightly over the berth edge.  
  
"Yeah, I guess.  You never did tell me why."  
  
"Ha-ha!  That's simple, my bargain-bin bonded : seventeen percent."  
  
Lockdown just sighed.  Swindle smiled and laughed, as he always did.


	5. You're disgusting.

The room was warm and soft where Swindle writhed.  Legs wrapped around Lockdown's neck, Swindle pushed his energon-puffed lower lips onto Lockdown's strong tongue and moaned.  The textiles under him were expensive and getting ruined with his lubrication or caught in the joints of his restless arms.  His hands were balled in fists, and his bright purple eyes reduced to slits, all while his thighs tried to bring Lockdown closer.  He bit his right fist, left hand uncurling to pinch at his headlights.  The hunter's thumbs were rubbing lovingly at his hip hubcaps, one thin and mauve, and the other thick and black.  With a whimpered shout, Swindle rolled his hips forward again.  
  
Lockdown licked and suckled the sweet mound of flesh before him.  Kneeling at the side of Swindle's bed in the deep red-litten room, he felt the air grow wet and heavy with the Humvee's uncontainable cries.  Soon he'd shudder again, for the second time that day, if that long knobbed tongue at the merchant mech's favourite nodes had any say in it.  There was a constellation of pleasure in Swindle's valve, and Lockdown had learned how to make it shine brightly in overload.  It was getting closer now.  He hummed and dragged those rolling hips closer to the edge of the bed.  
  
When Lockdown stopped giving him exquisite head— deep, textured, just the right places, hard and soft, yes that node —Swindle mewled, opening his optics just a sliver.  The taller mech's red hand landed heavily by his head, and then the other mod pulled off of Trailbreaker danced down to the slick folds revealed behind Swindle's transformed crotchguard.  He gasped when the thick black fingers started playing with his lips, sending off little shocks and pulses of invisible pressure all over the array.  The hand cupped over his interface and then something hard and wide like fingers went inside, or maybe it was the other way around.  He couldn't tell and couldn't care.  More hands, the sensation of more hands and tongues, lapped up his frame like flames of cold sunshine as the forcefield pushed in deep and sudden.  
  
Lockdown lurched down onto an elbow just in time for his hand to grip the base of Swindle's spike hard, holding back its jerking.  Their mouths met, and then their chests, the one joining soft and nuzzling through murmurs of unadorned desire, and the other hard and blazing painfully from sparks barely held back.  The forcefield inside Swindle pounded away almost too fast, and the phantom touches all over him squeezed out his long keening.  
  
"Not yet, not yet," Lockdown whispered.  
  
"B-buy now.  Supplies are running low."  Swindle's legs tightened around Lockdown's hips along with those words.  
  
"Ah, scrap, your pillow talk," he cursed, spike finally grinding against his partner's thigh.  Primus damn him to the pit, but he found it painfully erotic, for being so purely Swindle. "Go ahead, you greedy slagger."  He let go of Swindle's spike, withdrew his hands, and positioned himself over the pink and dripping valve lips.    
  
Their legs faltered and folded, wrapping with trembling need.  Thighs and crotchplates zinging with electric arcs, their flesh came together and came alive. Their oversensitive ports felt full of fuzzy bliss as they crushed against one another.  Rubbing valve to valve their charge built between squelching noises and staticky moans.  They were slippery and sticky, but their interlocked knees struggled to smash their hips tight so that the hardened nodes embedded in their inflamed lips and ring could meet.  They rubbed and screwed each other with the intense sensation of tongues and spike at once,  They dominated their pleasure with the throb, clench, and flutter of valves alone, like the lewdest of deep and demanding kisses. They panted, they shouted, their legs scrabbled at the sheets to keep them together, their backs hurt, and their ports felt full from touch.  They shuddered, they collapsed. They rocked together, valve to straining valve, until their engorged interface exploded with overload and oil.  
  
Swindle still shook, hips pounding at Lockdown's oversensitive port.  Finally, he stilled, and mumbled something, and his hand found Lockdown's knee.  Then his entrance.  Two fingers slipped inside, so easily.  
  
"Careful," Lockdown warned.  
  
"Hm-hm," Swindle managed a weak laugh.  "Your warranty's already shot."  His fingers found Lockdown's first ring of nodes and pressed at the anterior cluster, hard.  
  
The bounty hunter gasped, then shouted, then gasped much quieter, hips hitching into the petting touches while his valve sucked in the digits deeper.  He was damn happy with this, thus: "Shut up, slagface."  
  
Within minutes the big black bot was quivering and clutching at the berth's useless covers with his precision hand.  The other was firmly at Swindle's aft, projecting a ring of fluttering touch at the mech's reawakening interface.  The merchant was still wet and ready from earlier.  That much was easy to feel, and to see.  Lockdown's tongue slavered the remnants of Swindle's lubricant from his white face, hungry and wanting from just seeing that valve above him while his own was teased.  It just wouldn't do.  
  
Swindle probably wasn't prepared to be flipped over, but next thing he knew, he was on his back again, hands pinned above his head.  Bounty hunters and their tricks.  And poor defenseless salesmen with their weapons turned off on the honour system.  What's a mech to do... they kissed again, and they both heard the other's spark locks click.  
  
Slowly and smoothly, Lockdown's spike rocked into Swindle, feeling the slickness grip him.  It felt like heaven, as blissful as his taste and his deep touch.  Pushing and pulsating, they welcomed each other with tight pleasure.  Swindle took his voice out of the moans deep in their kiss long enough to order his partner to go deeper and bigger.  Gripping him tighter, headlights scraping against green chest, Lockdown obeyed.  As their sparks pulsed harder, barely separated by cerametallic alloys, the Corvette's spike lengthened and thickened, ridges expanding out of folded platelets to fill Swindle's valve just a little more.  Then a little more, just where Swindle wanted it.  Until it was fully unfolded and pressing Swindle into the joy of every overstretched and jolting node.  
  
Swindle was about to laugh and scream at once when their chests came undone.  His mouth was still frozen in a wide open triangle, but if he made any sound, neither of them could have known.  Their selves met, and their sparks intertwined, and that was their entire world punctuated by the pounding pleasure from below.  
  
There was someone else there, of course, just a little someone tethered in a shy orbit around Lockdown's spark.  Neither of them knew if they were doing this- whatever this was -correctly, having only instinct to guide them.  They grabbed at each other tighter, tendrils of light pulling their coronas into momentary concordance.  It was transcendent connection and happiness.  They'd be disgusted by what they saw in each other if they hadn't come to terms with that long ago.  Good enough, serves us right, and I love you, you monster.  
  
Primus, they separated, panting filthy breaths.  On a berth painted with destroyed bedding, their plating collapsed into one another.  
  
They woke up hours later to a wonderful loose-jointed afterglow, and terrible sticky plating.  Swindle tossed his expensive cloths into the hamper, reminding himself never to let lust overcome him when he was lazing on top of his berth and a rather more handsome than normal Lockdown leaned into his doorway.  Well, it had been worth it anyway.  Lockdown was stretching and scratching at his chestplate, feeling a bit heavier than before in his spark.  He shot a too-pleased grin at Swindle before rushing to steal the washracks first.  Swindle rushed after him with a yell, and they ended up washing together again.  After the water shut off, and the last soft nip to Swindle's mouthplates drifted away, they reminded each other to get back to work before they ended up spending another day screwing.  
  
Swindle still wasn't sure if he loved Lockdown.  But he enjoyed the free any-time any-where interface that his bonded offered, and doing that calmed his churning tanks.  To an outside eye, he hadn't grown any, but the cirugery to stabilise his tanks and subspace pocket had organised and freed up his insides enough for the protoform inside.  He wasn't flitting between memories anymore.  But he did have a terrible thirst for transfluid now and then, something only happily filling himself could satisfy.  He was pretty sure it was psychosomatic, and not anything real that his tanks were telling him, but he liked the fantasy and he liked the interface.  He really hadn't been this active since Ultra Magnus' coronation, and that was a long time ago.  Plus, it turned out that Lockdown had some interesting surprises in him, and on him, and Swindle had only sold some of them to the lusty lug.  Maybe it wasn't love, but Swindle knew, finally, that he wouldn't really have anyone else.  
  
No one else would clean up after him.  No one else would be open for him.  No one else knew all of Swindle's sins and still wanted him closer than any mod.  No one else would have sacrificed so damn much already for him, even before love infected his spark.  No one else could be so sick, broken, and happy.  That's what Lockdown knew.  
  
Swindle kicked at Lockdown's foot tyre before sliding over to the Death's Head's display screen.  Lockdown only grunted when the salesman's sixth sense prediction came true, and a call came through the line.  He punched the receive button with his thumb, and leant back on his captain's chair like a jaguar, swindle spinning on the stool next to him.  
  
Wheeljack came up onscreen.  Lockdown leered, recognising the face but warily waiting for him to introduce himself.  
  
"Eh, hello, Wheeljack here."  
  
"Lockdown.  Pleasure t'meetcha."  
  
"You're the bounty hunter, right?"  
  
"Bingo."  Lockdown's red right hand poked at invisible notes in the air to accompany the sound.  
  
"Well, huh.  This all has to be confidential.  Very confidential."  
  
"I've worked with the government before."  Lockdown straightened up, removing his leg from the chair arm.  "If you've got my number, you can send the forms."  
  
"That won't be necessary," Wheeljack said a bit too quickly.  Lockdown let him continue, interest truly piqued.  Swindle was watching from the side, cat-eyes thin in anticipation.  "It's better if the rest of the government doesn't know about this.  At all.  I can give you fifty thousand shanix to buy your privacy."  
  
"Indiscretion.  Sixty thousand."  
  
Wheeljack paused, but met only Lockdown's icy stare.  The silver mech's plating ruffled and a pink blush flashed across his facemask before he gave in entirely.  "Fine.  Sixty-thousand."  
  
Lockdown smiled.  What an easy target.  "Well then, mister Wheeljack, I do believe we can do business.  We'll call that your consultation fee for now.  So if you'd wire it over to my accountant's number..."  Lockdown lazily tapped in Swindle's number and sent it.  Then he waited, past Wheeljack's sputtering attempts to restart the conversation, until he got a ping from the very interested accountant sitting just outside of the camera's sight.  "So, what's the job?"  
  
"It's about Project Pergamum," Wheeljack said.  
  
"Why would you call it that?"  Lockdown's struts stiffened.  Wheeljack was intrigued by that reaction, but didn't know what to make of it.  The bounty hunter couldn't know the top-secret project, and there wsn't anything strange about the planet name.\  
  
"Well, you know Pergamum Syndrome, and how it relates to the planet's flux mutation rate and the interference effects of the gestation tank to memory wiring as related to the temporo-spacial spark lines and the—"  
  
"I don't need to know the science of how it works,"  Lockdown grunted.  "Just tell me what you need.  That's a bit more important, isn't it?"  
  
"Well it's very unstable.  Dangerous, 'specially as it decays to its next detonation point."  
  
"A bomb?"  
  
"Not exactly.  But you wouldn't make it away alive.  None of the test subjects have," Wheeljack said guiltily.  "Truth is, it's a top secret project that mislaid itself after its last detonation.  I- I know.  I know what you're thinking.  But it won't move too far until its next big bang, and if I don't get it back, and it goes off, look, we just don't know what it'll do outside the lab.  The heavily shielded lab."  
  
"Guessing you want it back.  So, where is it?"  
  
"I last tracked it outside of Protihex.  Which is bad enough on its own.  I'll send you a program to tune  a spark-tracker to it.  It'll give of stronger and stronger spark _like_ pulses as it nears boom time.  If it gets to 250 millicycles, shoot it."  
  
"Won't explode?  Or it'll activate the failsafe like on the Little Bot class, right?"  
  
"Hey, you know your bombs!"  
  
"Right, job's simple enough.  Got any pictures of it if I'm gonna track it?"  
  
"Sorry.  Spark tracking's the best I can leak to you."  
  
Lockdown grunted.  "I'll send you my contract.  Retrieval's worth ten thou plus 40% of its market value."  
  
"I can't pay that!"  
  
"Oh, wow, is it something expensive?  Something expensive that you need to get back all secret-like?  Wonder why I charge so much."  
  
"This thing's paid for at taxpayer levels of funding!"  Wheeljack threw up his hands, head-fins blinking furiously.  "The project so far, just for construction and handling, has been- it's- it's an eighty million shanix... object.  I don't have that kind of money!"  
  
"Eighty million shanix."  That was a fragging scrapload of money.  That was more money than even Swindle'd seen in one place, and the merchant's fans were whirring audibly.  Lockdown shot him a look, then they stared at each other for a bit too long.  
  
"I can give you another hundred thousand, plus the ten that's your fee, and the sixty for keeping it quiet.  That's one hundred seventy thousand shanix."  
  
"Three hundred," Lockdown shot back, his large hand that used to be Trailbreaker's gripping at the pilot's chair.  Swindle's spark was whirling hard in its casing, his violet eyes violently bright.  
  
"You think just because I work for the Magnus, I'm made of money?"  
  
"I think you have access to it."  
  
"I can't."  
  
"You can."  Lockdown stood up, both hands curling into painful fists.  "If you want that thing back."  
  
Wheeljack and Lockdown stared at each other through their screens.  The tension grew in brambles of static electricity, fuzzing their vision.  Swindle could feel the creak of Lockdown's joints through the floor, and his purple hands grabbed at his mouth, pushing down the stream of words he wanted to shout.  But he wasn't supposed to be there, ever since the word "confidential" had been splattered into the room.  Part of him was so angry at Lockdown for not including him in the negotiation, and part of him worried honestly about the standoff of one semi-legal mech against the government scientist who could jail them with just one incident report.  Wheeljack had their number.  Lockdown was being too greedy.  The government didn't work like this.  Pay like this.  Lockdown's red eyes blazed, peeling into the shadows of his face.  
  
"I'll pay it,"  Wheeljack sighed.  
  
"Great.  Where do you want it delivered, and by when?"  
  
"Five hours or kablooie.  Deliver it to Ariel in the Academy docking bay, say it's for me."  
  
"Sending the contract.  I got the spark-tracking program.  Pleasure doing business with you, Wheeljack."  
  
"Just get it back in time.  And no blabbing.  Or we'll both lose our sparks."  
  
The screen flipped off.  Lockdown's struts collapsed limply with a mighty ex-vent.  
  
"Can't believe I was nervous." Lockdown forced the words out of his wide mouth under guilty eyes.  Swindle jumped on him, clinging tight.  Lockdown's arms came down to make a bench for the quivering mech's purple and gold aft.  "H-hey..."  
  
"I can't believe you just bullied a government worker out of that much."  Swindle pounded on Lockdown's shoulder in the weaker space above where the red arm plugged into the chest.  
  
"I think you mean : _swindled_ a government worker."  
  
"Primus!"  Swindle slapped both sides of Lockdown's face at once, hard enough to hurt.  "Primus."  He leaned forward to kiss the taller mech, chest collapsing onto the frightened thrum of his partner's spark.  Lockdown cupped each thigh, and squeezed.  Swindle licked the gaps in the busted-up dental ridges, and bit at scorched lipplates.  "Berth."  
  
"We gotta get the thing.  Only half a day left."  Lockdown delivered words with kisses down Swindle's thick neck and collar as one hand roamed to the captain's console.  Swindle's aft squirmed in his remaining palm.  
  
"Quick, goldspark."  
  
Gnawing at Swindle's collar with fleeting glances at the work screen, Lockdown opened up Wheeljack's program and set it to track Project Pergamum's signal.  A few more flicks of his trembling hand, two button presses, and the black palm flew back to the delicate place on Swindle's thighs hidden by the crotchguard.  Feeling the mechflesh there so silky smooth, and feeling the heat of Swindle's panel just a few inches away, Lockdown moaned.  Swindle answered in kind, grabbing at the spines on the other mech's shoulders and back.  Lockdown pushed off of the pilot's chair and they slouched to the door under the weight of their writhing plating.  
  
They made it to Lockdown's room, surrounded by body parts and playbills, and there the disembodied glowing eyes lifelessly watched them come alive.  
  
Four long Cybertronian hours later, Swindle was polishing up an old orange tow-hook mod while at the other end of interlocked legs and lazily rutting valves Lockdown was reading shameless erotica one-armed.  Finishing a section, the taller mech flexed his inner thighs and there between.  Swindle dropped the mod on purpose, wiggling his hips along with the happy trill of his vocaliser.  Swindle slid the arm back to Lockdown.  Lockdown put down the fiction pad, laid onto his back, and reattached the appendage in a river of snaking cables.  Swindle thought he looked good that way, playing at vulnerability.  He reached into his subspace pocket.  
  
"We have twenty minutes?"  He drug out a double-headed dildo.  
  
"Maybe," Lockdown chuffed.  
  
Swindle ground their blushing panels together for a breathless minute before pushing away.  Lockdown panted, valve leaking, looking at Swindle with pleasure-dim optics and his mouth hung open.  The port was well wet, alight with constellations of sensory nodes and circuits glowing through the thick, sweet, pearly lubricant.  Black and green on alternating lips of mesh faded into the white now blushing pink of the soft inner-port walls.  Those petal-like panels shifted in excitement on the inside, teasing their body with a pang of pleasure unfulfilled.  Especially when they brushed against not just one another, but one of at least two in-valve piercings.  And his ridged jack was bent up to his abdomen from rigour, the green and black detailed plating flared outward from the heat pulsing out of the flushed tubes and bright nodes underneath sensitive metal.  The natural knobs, and the unnatural line of pierced steel rings hanging from them on each under-plate of the spike, glinted in the failing afternoon light.  There was a lot to choose from in his partner, but Swindle settled on his first plan.  He guided one end of his toy into his own hungry entrance, smiling at the wet sounds it made, and how Lockdown's port convulsed sympathetically.  
  
"You'll get your turn," Swindle said even as he scooted his body closer and began to line up Lockdown's hips.  It took only a little fumbling and cursing at the slippery area before the toy breached Lockdown fully.  And then they slid together until their panels met again.  Lockdown's thinner burgundy fingers found the salesman's spike, and stroked.  Swindle sighed.  His valve was twitching around the toy, and into his partner, and Lockdown wasn't the best at handjobs when compared to his great mouth but scrap.  This felt great.  Maybe he'd ride Lockdown's spike next.  Maybe the other way around.  All he cared to know was the approaching fuzzy white bliss of overload as Lockdown's thumb slipped through the precum at his slit.  
  
There was an alarm.  Lockdown cursed.  There was the sound of slapping at plating, and Swindle's optics onlined to see the bounty hunter pushing his still hard plug back into his pelvic plating.  Which was a stopgap measure that couldn't be comfortable.  The entire green pygidium slid back into place, covering straining spike and dripping valve as if to pretend they didn't exist.  Swindle looked down.  His own transfluid was seeping into his grill.  It felt nasty.  He sat up, feeling the soft dildo in his valve shift.  
  
"Whazzat..."  
  
"We're close to Wheeljack's thing," Lockdown said in his clipped business tone.  
  
Swindle blinked his heavy eyelids until he was fully alert.  Then he promptly stood and searched around in Lockdown's shelves for a cleaning cloth.  "How close to showtime?"  
  
"About five minutes.  I'm headed to the airlock."  Lockdown was strapping on some grappling-hook mods to his ribs, and switching out the EMP-blaster for his personal magnetic levitator.  
  
"Where are we?"  
  
"Take a look."  Lockdown slapped at the small window and it promptly grew over the entire wall.  The ground below them fell for miles into the maw of Primus spotted by flecks of oozing energon and giant fireflies.  
  
"Isn't the Polyhex Hole government-controlled airspace?"  
  
"Aren't we temporary government employees?"  
  
"Good point."  
  
Lockdown was already out of the room.  Swindle turned hurriedly, finishing off his quick clean with an alcohol rag before he sprinted down to the airlock as well.  The inner doors to the airlock exploded open before Swindle's face, cold energon-spiced air rushing in on him from the open bay beyond.  Lockdown had jumped already, sectioned coattails fluttering in the gale as he fell.  Then before he knew it, Swindle was flying toward the airlock's opening.  He stopped only by expanding his forcefield to maximum distance and opacity for a moment before he could grab onto a thick pipe.  It was like Primus was inhaling him with the deafening wind, and the entire clattering Death's Head along with it.  
  
Below, Lockdown was still tumbling and flying through the vicious cross-currents using small flickers from the jet engines at his hips.  Something white and bright crashed back and forth in the wind, with Lockdown's black body flitting after it, no more powerful against the pit's gusts than a nanognat.  Then there was a horrible howling, and Lockdown flew back up in a second, banging into the Death's Head's black hull with a sickening crack.  The winds had reversed, screaming through the open airlock.  Swindle could almost hear nothing, not even Lockdown's booming yell as the mercenary crawled to the door with his clawing grappling hooks.  
  
Swindle reached out, dumbly trying to touch the other mech despite the force of the air hitting his arm stronger than a punch.  Lockdown heaved over the lip of the airlock, and his grappling hooks shot inside so that a lunge sent him through the attacking wind and battered him there, hanging loose.  His arms were busy holding a grey and sparking thing about the size of Swindle's head.  The Pergamum Project, Swindle thought as he finally grasped onto one of Lockdown's grappling wires.  
  
Then, everything was still.  Lockdown crashed down on the edge of the Death's Head's opening, where one of his six grappling lines shattered and snapped off.  Swindle started to fall out into dead air, and instinctively transformed back to his car mode.  His front wheels met floor and spun feverishly until he drove up the far end of the airlock.  There, his engine sputtered.  Lockdown groaned, then pushed his body up into the docking bay.  He secured the Pergamum Project in the cargo, up in an old fashioned bolted locker, then went back to close the airlock.  
  
The ground breathed in.  Lockdown clutched at Swindle's side-mirrors, Swindle squawked, and they both flew out of the airlock again.  Lockdown sent out his grappling hooks, but they bounced off of the walls that rushed by too quick or the raging arsine air.  Swindle shivered, engine howling.  Lockdown yelled something at him, but he couldn't hear.  They fell.  
  
They fell a long time, and the Death's Head was blocking out the sun above them as it fell with them.  At some point, they stopped being inhaled and started to genuinely free-fall.  Weightless and feeling alien on their own planet, they could see nothing but the weeping Mouth of Primus.    Lockdown clutched Swindle closer.  His grappling wires wouldn't respond anymore.  The Death's Head communicated to pings like a petal lost in a time-capture film of a stream.  Then, even it was silent.  He could feel Swindle's spark like nothing separated them.  And he felt in his own the rare sensation of genuine fear.  
  
Ruing the idea of fear being the last thing he'd feel, Lockdown raced to put it out of his processor, focusing on calculating how soon they'd hit ground or at worse the planet's mantle.  A few minutes.  The ground didn't come, and Swindle was pleading with Primus himself to sell everything and anything he owned to live.  If Primus would just consider a downpayment on their sparks?  It was a limited time only opportunity their god would be crazy to pass up.  Please, they were in a going out of business sale here, and the business was his life, and oh Primus please, please I don't want to die!  They'd hit a point in the planet where the heat would fry their circuits in about ten minutes.  
  
A sudden heat hit them, not how Lockdown thought it would go, but he smiled and turned his mind off.  It was funny how time slowed down at the moment of death, he thought, and how he had time to think of how this sudden heat didn't match up with geoscience, and the farce of being able to think that when he'd be dead with no one to tell.  He wondered how much time all the people he'd killed had after he stopped their sparks.  Did they have all this time, like he had?  And how bad should he feel about it, letting them have this seeming eternity to think about what was happening?  He could still feel Swindle's spark-spin, slowed down.  He felt his coattails hit his thighs, clumsy and slow like seaweed.  He opened his optics like a sunrise, daring his last second alive to show him what his death truly was.  Blue-white like zero g flame.  
  
It was completely disgusted with him.  
  
The Death's Head flew into them at full force, and it tumbled and flung them against its walls before screaming red and locking all of its doors.  The wind stopped, Lockdown and Swindle splattered onto the floor in a gob of something that evaporated quicker than alcohol, and everything was very, very still.  
  
"Lockdown, tell The Pit to shut up," Swindle croaked under the whooping of the Death's Head's emergency klaxons.  
  
"If we're in The Pit, don't you figure that's part of the punishment?"  Lockdown's spark was in agony, like a split metallomelon, but worse was the stabbing pain that drilled a rut around his corona.  Frag, the sparkling was probably screaming at him too.  
  
"How about you shut up too?"  
  
"Good thing I don't believe in it," Lockdown muttered to himself about The Pit, struggling to push himself to the safety lever.  It felt a like a million ton weight as he pulled it down.  The shrieking stopped.  The red lights stayed on, and the ship's underbelly displayed a whole list of damage an errors just on this side of structural stability that kept it on backup power.  It'd be days to fix.  "Get up ; we're still alive."  
  
"My gut feels like a grenade exploded in it.  Nine out of ten doctors do _not_ recommend it."  Swindle rolled up to Lockdown's feet, not bothering to Transform.  
  
"Yeah, great."  Lockdown put the ship on full self-diagnostic and lockup.  "We still have half an hour to get the thing back to Wheeljack."  
  
"Three hundred thousand shanix?"  
  
"Three hundred thousand shanix.  Want me to throw you upstairs?"  Lockdown punched open the hatch to the control room.  
  
"I'm too tired to transform."  
  
"Here ya go."  Lockdown heaved Swindle up by the bumper, and the Humvee made a satisfying crash to the floor above him.  When he stepped up the ladder himself, Swindle was on his side, wheels spinning fruitlessly.  Lockdown flipped him back upright.  
  
The Death's Head's exterior display flushed across the front wall at the sweep of Lockdown's hand.  Outside the ship was blackness.  On first instinct, he supposed the polarised glass was broken, but then he saw the tiny pinpricks of far off stars.  He whirled around, checking the external camera displays, but they showed the same thing, endless blackness with no ground in sight.  He tilted the Death's Head to angle the displays to see all around them, but there was nothing but cold and unknown constellations.  
  
"Where are we?" Swindle piped up.  
  
"Scrap if I know.  I'll scan for transwarp buoys."  
  
A minute passed before the scan completed, with no sign of civilisation or even a warp rift in sight, other than the signal from Swindle's subspace.  They were painfully far from Cybertron, the colonies, or even Quintesson space.  
  
"We're lost, aren't we?"  Swindle rolled closer, engine thrumming at Lockdown's legs.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Well, you got us into this, so—"  
  
"I didn't!"  Lockdown's fist crashed into the wall.  "There's no use laying blame."  
  
"Maybe we really are in The Pit.  This could all be an illusion to trap us in empty space forever."  
  
"Stop it with The Pit.  There's no such thing.  And if we were in The Pit, whoever's supposed to be in charge wouldn't have put us together."  
  
"Whoever's supposed to be in charge?  Weren't you supposed to be the Ex-Cyber-Ninja?  It's Mortilus, you clod."  
  
"Yeah well they teach Cyber-Ninjas to clear the mind of distractions.  So, Processor over Matter, Immortal Sparks, The Thirteen, The Guiding Hand, Ghosts, Primus, The Pit : distractions?  Figured out long ago that That Old Time Religion counts."  
  
"Wonderful!  I'm stuck in the afterlife with an atheist."  Swindle grumbled out his muffler and rolled off to the corner.  
  
"As long as I can argue about it with you, I'm going to assume we're still alive.  Use a little common sense and I'm guessing that that thing Wheeljack sent us for went off."  
  
"No, it was a bomb, right?"  
  
"Yeah, he made it out that way, but he never said it explicitly.  Just said folks didn't come back.  Think, what if they got transwarped instead?  Right outside of the range of any space bridge we know."  
  
"Great theory, but does it matter how we got here?  We don't know the way back.  What do we do, just point in one direction and go?"  
  
"We could sit here and starve if you like that better."  
  
Swindle's windshield wipers flicked.  "I don't."  
  
"Or I could crawl into your trunk and zip back to Earth through your personal stora—"  
  
"Don't you dare!  I told you, that was a fluke.  Trespassing.  Hijacking.  Euugh!"  Swindle's windshield wipers went into overdrive along with a distinct full-body rattle of his plating.  His doors opened and closed with a slam.  "I feel creepy just thinking about it.  Where you going?"  
  
Lockdown sank down into the duct to the ship's bowels.  "I'm going to the airlock to get that eighty million shanix prize.  Not like we can deliver it."  
  
"But if it's worth that much, it's probably something powerful.  Or a universally expensive commodity," Swindle thought out loud, agreeing.  
  
In about twenty minutes, the telltale whirr of a levitation field mod scored the appearance of a large heart-like structure looped with wires and lit portholes.  The prize popped out of the hatch and onto the ground Lockdown, levitator sprung from his arm, slid out of the hatch and onto splayed knees around it in one slippery movement.  His bulk spread over the object, bright red eyes flashing at it from every angle at the end of his long thick neck.  
  
"Give me your expert opinion," Swindle said, sliding the hatch lid back with a grind of his wheels on the way to the curious object.  
  
"Probably an engine.  There's some standard hookups.  But it looks more like an organ,"  Lockdown concluded, leaning back from the thing.  
  
"Mod?"  
  
"Organ," the hunter growled. "They've cleaned it up but it must've been part of someone."  
  
Swindle shivered.  Project Omega, Project Safeguard, Project Airachnid, and now Project Pergamum : those were just the big name projects of the many Swindle knew of from his career of information bartering, and Wheeljack's recent coverup.  Perceptor may have been brilliant, but his work just plain gave Swindle the heebie-jeebies, which was a very scientific term.   And Swindle didn't want to even be close to it.  He shuffled away from the very shiny but subtly pulsating thing on the floor, radiator hissing.  "More of Perceptor's bio-engineering."  
  
"May be a modified t-cog instead..."  Lockdown was hovering around the thing again, back curved and twisting harshly.  
  
"I don't care what it is.  We can't sell it.  What are you doing?!"  
  
Swindle's headlights flared in shock.  Lockdown had unscrewed a panel of the thing, and had stuck a finger inside.  Lockdown drew out his finger, and then sucked on it.  Something pink and unsettling had been attached.  
  
"You're _disgusting_... hey!  What if it gets into your spark, or our sparkling!  If you've poisoned them, I'm holding you contractually respon—"  
  
"It's just energon."  Lockdown took another taste.  Tangy sweet like a lemon, but shot through with something milky.  
  
"Drink it like a coconutron why don't you?"  
  
"Innermost energon.  With a side of mercury from a t-cog.  Some sort of mutated spark casing."  
  
"You _would_ know from the taste."  
  
Lockdown spun the loose panel back on, clicking it harshly into place.  He sat back, taking a long exvent to clear his chemical receptors.  "You're not a bit curious?  There could be someone alive in there."  
  
"I don't read a spark signature, do you?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Not a customer, not interested.  We should throw it back out into space.  Unless you want it for dessert."  Swindle headed for the door.  
  
"Awwh, don't be like that."  Lockdown kicked the terrible cross between a spark and t-cog to a corner of the command console.  He leant back on one elbow, displaying himself long and lean with his burgundy hand twirling around his codpiece.  "We can continue where we left off."  
  
"Not where your mouth's just been, mister!"  Swindle snapped, flashing his highbeams, and then finally left the room.  
  
Lockdown collapsed onto the floor, casting his wild morose laughter at the cieling.


	6. You, me, and all this empty space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think AO3 didn't notify those who follow this story that it updated previously. So if this chapter seems out of place, the previous one will explain how Lockdown and Swindle got into their current predicament, lost in space. There is a birth scene in this chapter. It is rather alien in nature, but if you just don't like to read any sort of birth scene, stop reading after the excerpt from Pride and Programming.  
> cybertronian hour = ~2 earth hours ; 10 hours in a day equal to Earth's  
> cybertronian month = 40 days each ; 9 months in a year plus a 5-6 day leap month  
> Why yes it is highly coincidental that Cybertron has the same orbital patterns as Earth.  
> chirugery = cyber-surgery

Swindle returned to the control room in time for an energon cube.  Lockdown was still poking at that thing called Project Pergamum.  Swindle took a cube and sat down opposite him on the floor, strangely silent.  His big violet eyes were dimmed in thought.  He sipped the energon slowly.  
  
Lockdown had taken the thing half apart, shunting its energon flow through plastic tubing.  He poked and prodded its insides, taking notes on a pad beside him.  Both of his hands were changed out to more delicate ones, full of instruments for maintenance and measurement.  Swindle couldn't imagine even attempting to reverse engineer the thing, if that was the mech's aim.  Lockdown just continued his inspection, then took out a few washers and nuts and screwed them in place around new tubing.  Energon shot up through the new loop.  Then a length of thick wire went in, and Swindle saw the sparks from a thumb-mounted soldering iron.  Lockdown sat back a minute, pushing the project around like a deconstructed orange.  It was dark blue inside, with filaments of silver and energon blue, and yellow response lights crudely soldered on in a neat grid with labelling in Vos characters.  Obviously not Lockdown's work.  The half removed panels flapped limply as the sickeningly living thing spun.  Lockdown rolled back over his folded feet, then slapped a panel back closed on Project Pergamum with an annoyed growl.  
  
"Fragging PRIMUS!"  
  
Swindle looked up from his purple daze, realising he'd been staring more at his hands holding his empty cube than the other mech in the cabin.  
  
"Devcon is going to take all my slagging clients and there's nothing I can do about it!"  Lockdown collapsed onto the floor again, kicking out his bent legs until they were straight, the wheels grinding slowly against the floor.  Swindle's hands twitched and then they came together, loudly, smashing the cube.  
  
"You're angry about that? We're somewhere off the edge of the universe, our ship is half off-line, we're both knocked up, and you're ticked off about _that_?"  
  
"Slag it, Swindle, what else am I gonna get mad at?"  Lockdown shot up from the ground, pacing toward his captain's chair.  
  
"What about _my_ clients?"  Swindle put a hand to his aching chest.  
  
"You'll lose 'em too."  
  
Swindle threw both his hands up in disgust with a muffled shout.  
  
Lockdown sat down and swivelled his throne away from the sight of Swindle.  
  
"What are you doing with Project Pergamum, anyway?" Swindle asked.  
  
"The thing," Lockdown corrected, slurring out the words like poison.  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"I'm looking to get it connected to the engine.  Need to take it apart first."  
  
"It's not plug-n-play?"  
  
"No, it's damn sticky.  I'll have to gear up some shunts and probably strip an adapter from a sensory helm.  Maybe the adapter patch too."  
  
"So, you have a plan?"  Swindle walked toward the captain's chair where Lockdown hid.  
  
"It'll keep going off.  In at least five hours like before, right? Four hours now.  I could shoot it.  Or I could hook it up and see if I can get us closer to Cybertron."  
  
"I'd shoot it."  Swindle's hand curled over the top of the chair.  
  
"I would too," Lockdown admitted with a sigh.  "But it can spacebridge.  That's what we need."  
  
"Right.  Well."  Swindle let go of the chair back.  He couldn't turn it around to look at Lockdown right now.  "I'll be redoing my accounts."  
  
Lockdown barked a short sick laugh.  
  
" _When_ we get home, I want my logbook so clean, Chromia from the Commerce Guild can lick it, and lick my aft."  Swindle tromped back to the door, headed for his room.  He waited.  "So that's what I'll be doing."  
  
"Rodger."  
  
Swindle waited again, then left.  
  
Four hours later, there was a sickening lurch inside of Swindle, pulling him through himself and the wall, and then blackness.  He felt like each air molecule was screaming at him individually when he started to come online, and there was a sickening thick fog in his systems like having the worst spacebridge sickness.  He returned his account book to his subspace and slithered back to the control room on his wheels.  Transforming had made him feel a bit better.  
  
Lockdown was lying next to "the thing" on his front, optics dark.  Swindle bumped two of Lockdown's diagnostic arms on his left his chrome bumper, then drove over all four of them when he didn't respond.  The thing was buzzing.  It was connected by a think bunch of ribbon wires, energon tubes, and insulated cables to the ship's engine.  Or so he thought since they disappeared down through the engine hatch.  Swindle drove over Lockdown again, then transformed and pulled out a blaster.  He let out three rounds into Lockdown's limp body before muscles started to stir.  
  
Swindle actually smiled in relief when Lockdown knocked the blaster away in a lightning quick movement.  Because if that mech died, well scrap he didn't know what he'd do.  That karate-chop stung his wrist but it had someone important behind it.  
  
"I feel like the welcome mat after a black friday sale.  What happened?"  
  
"The thing went off again," Lockdown grumbled.  He pulled himself onto his haunches then studied the star-strewn sky around them.  "We're somewhere else."  
  
"Well that's progress!"  
  
"Regress, sidegress, who the slag knows."  
  
"Keep positive, Lockdown! We lived, right? So if the thing goes off again, we'll live through that too, though not without a few bismuth tablets for my internals I'll say, and maybe a nice headwrap, like on Vulcano 6? They had the best treatment for a tired processor, you shou—"  
  
"Can it."  
  
"Well then I'll just take my energon and leave.  Prosh, numbers are more friendly than you."  
  
Lockdown growled and crawled back to the teleporting terror, pulling up a holoscreen he'd attached to it.  Swindle watched him run through matrices one by one, tweaking here and there, before finally leaving in the loud huff he'd planned.  The slagger didn't want to give him the time of day ; didn't want to thank him for waking him up from what must have been a temporary stasis? Well fine then.  Let him work on his project in peace.  Let him mope to death.  
  
The thing went off every day.  Ten cybertronian hours, that was, on the dot.  They were six days and six jumps in.  Swindle had just started getting used to the sensation of his spark being banished from his frame like scattering water when this time he felt the pulling accelerate forward.  He froze all the way through, cold enough to scream, and then everything seemed to focus again.  
  
Swindle heard Lockdown's whoop of triumph through the Death's Head's walls.  Unable to hold himself back, fuelled by some infectious hope, Swindle ran into the control room.  Project Pergamum wasn't on the floor and neither was Lockdown.  The hatch to the engines was open.  Swindle poked his head down, catching Lockdown screwing that thing into place on the central hub, with thick energon tubes and a simplified data array.  
  
"Where are we?" Swindle called down.  
  
"No fragging idea!"  Lockdown coughed, actual soot exiting his vents, but he couldn't hold back his smile as he wiped the powdery black off of his brow.  "But I got something working!"  
  
"What?" Swindle's voice was hard to hear over the engines pounding next to Lockdown's head.  Lockdown just waved at him to tell him to get his head out of the ladderway.  In a few powerful pulls he was back up into the control room.  The hatch to the engines slammed down and hissed, returning the ship to silence behind thirty centimetres of sonic padding.  "What did you get working," Swindle repeated.  
  
"I've hooked it up to the engines.  Now I can try to program it to spacebridge us back onto the grid."  
  
"And who needs a genius like Wheeljack when we have you?"  
  
"Look, I'm not—"  Lockdown massaged the back of his neck, taking a look upwards. "I don't know what those eggheads were doing.  I barely know engine repair.  I can do Death's Head.  And so I hooked it up to Death's Head.  The thing's not right.  It's definitely a dead spark chamber merged with a t-cog, with some system integrated to control it, all in a damn language I can't even slagging speak so, yanno, maybe I deserve a little credit?"  
  
"Dead?"  Swindle's face contorted at the thought of the object's internals.  Mixed with a t-cog mixed with eww.  
  
"Yes, Lockdown, you're amazing," the hunter mocked himself. Then he walked away from Swindle to the energon dispenser.  "Dead.  Maybe it used to be someone.  If someone could live with that in their internals."  
  
"What now?"  
  
"You any good at programming?"  
  
"Not my forte, but I do have D++ For Dummies in stock."  
  
"How about you sell it to me for this cube of energon?"  Lockdown held out the freshly filled cube.  
  
"Deal."  Swindle swiped the cube, then dug around in his subspace for the datapad.  Once located, he flung it at Lockdown.  The freelancer caught it easily between two fingers.  
  
"Meanwhile you're still cooking the books?"  Lockdown pulled his own cube from the dispenser, hooking the nozzle to fill the protomesh.  
  
"Cooking? Well, prosh, it's like you don't even trust me!"  Swindle laid a hand over his chest.  
  
"I love you too,"  Lockdown huffed a chuckle to himself.  
  
"Haven't proved it in a while."  Swindle's eyes lidded hungrily.  
  
"Got too much to do."  
  
"And 'me' is not on that list?"  
  
"Oh don't worry, _I_ get screwed all the time.  Ever since we got stranded out here in the middle of scrapheap nowhere.  To be precise."  Lockdown walked over with energon in his left hand and used his other two to snag up Swindle by the waist.  
  
"You knew what I meant!"  Swindle teased and wiggled in Lockdown's grasp.  
  
"I know it exactly, you dirty conman."  Lockdown's grip solidified.  They were heading back to his room.  
  
"Oh, no, _officer!_ "  Swindle fake struggled again, but then Lockdown's lower-right arm came up and flicked Swindle's crest.  "Owwwww, what'd you do that for?"  Swindle batted at Lockdown's green-striped stomach, then looked up to see the mech's grin gone.  
  
"Not this time," Lockdown said, looking at Swindle eye to eye as the habsuite door opened.  "Let's just do it you and me."  
  
"Something wrong?"  
  
"I'll tell you after."  Lockdown set Swindle down on the berth.  
  
"You will not."  Swindle sat up on his knees, fists to his hips.  "If there's something wrong, tell me now!"  
  
"Shh." Lockdown leant down to cover Swindle's lips in a soft kiss.  "Not now.  You're too pretty to worry."  
  
"Oh, I like the sound of pretty," Swindle murmured when his mouth was released.  He laid back on the berth, careful not to hit his head on the storage containers above.  "You're being romantic again.  I really should be concerned."  
  
Lockdown climbed in over Swindle.  "Naw.  Just reminds me of earlier."  
  
"Earlier?" The hunter's hands were already sweeping down Swindle's form just the way he liked.  
  
"Back before you realised I own you too."  Lockdown nibbled Swindle's collar.  
  
"Do not."  Purple fingers raked down Lockdown's strong abdomen, just as purple thighs spread in invitation.  
  
"All right, Swindle, you win."  Feeling down the silky smooth premium paint job of Swindle's thighs, Lockdown's sensitive diagnostic fingers soon found the hot excited metal hidden beneath the eternally bothersome crotchplate.  
  
"Good." Swindle clicked open twice.  His grey plate was out of the way, and his thick purple-noded spike shuffled out of its casing.  His valve whirred open only a microsecond later, the wet lights of its wide rim just as inviting as his hooded eyes.  "Now give it to me hard and fast."  
  
"Not on your life."  Lockdown smiled in triumph, then began to slowly roll their jacks together.  
  
Before they knew it, their endless night had descended into slow comfy screwings, no motion jagged enough to activate the lights despite their ragged breaths and shuddering bodies.  They moved and moaned in a twilight daze of dim biolight, red and violet blending into an obscene magenta.  Such delirium could rise from the velvety tease of a tongue around the base of Lockdown's spines ; such opulence spilled like golden honey from Swindle's lips when he cried out praise or came like a river.  Their fuzzy aftershocks crawled over the bed and into their joints, only to be licked up again and sucked off of overload-flavoured plating.  
  
They'd rolled over too many times to remember who was on top, and the erections they rolled between them had no memory.  They slipped inside each other softly, whispering curses for Primus.  They worshipped each other with clinging valves.  Who could be sure who was inside, and who could care when they were wet with joy? But someone's wonderful, long, ridged spike was inside someone's bulging tightness ; and someone's spike-studs and underside ring piercings were capturing someone's puffed up and pulsating pleasure nodes and lubricant ducts between the dead steel and the hot textured living flesh.  And that spike was doing it so slow, to tease the flesh so tightly squeezing and squirting, and pushing hard so hard.  Ribbing and piercings were pulling out screams in the tiny space of a wildfire-hot valve.  No amount of lubricant and transfluid could put out the heat melting their plating and their vision.  Their sparks had met.  
  
It was a light touch, but Swindle felt safe enough to touch someone else, and to try to comprehend his child again.  It was almost impossible to understand the enormity of creating new life.  Someone else was there, and he only had instinct to go on to make sure the protoform he was growing would fit them.  He didn't know how, but with invisible hands, it was like he was measuring them both, and it felt about right.  Vaguely, he felt their physical bodies shift.  They drifted closer, like the deepest kiss and the most perfect fit.  It was a sigh of contentment.  
  
He felt like he'd always be caught if he fell, but now he was in freefall again, experiencing an embrace from a spongy spark made slimy from other mechs' energon.  It must have been humorous because he heard from the other end of the merge that his was malformed as well.  And then they both thought at the same exact moment that this was no time for insults.  The decay shattered and swept away.  Their sparks were shining, whirling, full of halos of electricity and happiness, with a little growing thing that danced between them.  
  
There's something, they say, about how a sparkmerge reveals the truth about people seeing each other for who they really are.  Swindle felt anxious, needing to hide their reality from the sparklet.  Then he realised, trembling and disbelieving, that all that rotten sludge that was their sparkbond had long ago turned to clean water.  
  
When he faded out of the merge like a nebulous dream, Swindle felt himself inside of Lockdown's strong rolling grip, and he heard the hunter's grunts just above the growl of cooling fans.  Transfluid and more was leaking out of his beautifully stretched but empty valve.  
  
The lights were on.  Lockdown had his eyes closed, sitting on top.  He was still tight like a new mech, but the studs of his valve rolled over Swindle's girth like diamond embers.  Inside, he was fluttering now, his port platelets unable to coordinate into a pulling grip anymore, so each one struggled and sought out its own kiss to Swindle's spike.  He huffed and humped a few more times before his green thighs gave out and he collapsed in a clenching mess.  Lockdown's valve squeezed hard everywhere all at once.  It felt amazing.  Swindle let himself slide into his own overload.  
  
Swindle awoke happily from his pleasure, loose-limbed and truly sated. "So, that thing you wanted to talk about?"  He purred into Lockdown's audio sensor.  
  
Lockdown's chest lay heavy and hot over Swindle's, vents loudly cooling him.  His spark was hurting again, just another _pleasure_ of having a parasite on it.  It felt a bit scratched, but he pushed that phantom sensation aside.  He rose onto elbows, then his own two feet.  
  
"Get everything you need from your room, I'm shutting off fuel to the rest of the ship," Lockdown said tiredly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'll get my stuff too.  We have to put everything but the engine and control room in lockdown."  
  
"In _lockdown,_ huh?"  Swindle stayed where he was with watchful violet optics trained on his partner.  The mech was stripping mods from the walls and into a crate.  
  
"I'm not scrapping you.  Just get into the control room when you're done.  Then we'll really talk."  
  
"Should I pack light or heavy?"  Swindle asked as if the entire situation were a joke.  
  
"Pack for the apocalypse.  We might be stuck in those rooms a long time."  
  
"Well I certainly _am_ looking forward to our _talk_."  Swindle slid his legs off of the berth.  
  
"You wanna talk here, fine, but I figured you'd wanna use the washracks first."  Lockdown considered one of his hand-guns, a more ornamental piece, then put it back.  
  
Swindle considered having the last word before shrugging and heading to the washracks.  Lockdown's behaviour was frightening, or rather that Swindle had an inkling of what was behind it was frightening.  There was a little black bug in the back of his processor whispering about energon and fresh water.  He wasted as much of both as he dared when he took his hot bath.  It wasn't until the water and his systems had cooled together that he got out.  He watched the glitter of sloughed transfluid and dead nanopigmets swirl down the drain.  He was still a bit afraid.  But he couldn't let Lockdown know.  His processor replayed a pep talk from a thousand years prior, working with the Vok.  He reminded himself to smile, like every salesman should.  He headed to the control room, bypassing his own.  Everything he needed was inside of himself.  
  
As in, inside his personal storage dimension.  Not his dangerously wobbling spark.  
  
Lockdown had a few crates of essentials piled in a corner like shelves, with a few personal effects spread on his beat up West-Kaonian poncho.  Swindle smiled at him and half waved.  The door shut tightly behind him.  Then, Lockdown's finger pressed Enter on a .sysconfig program, and locks engaged all over the ship with booming TOOMs.  Swindle settled himself into the corner to the right of the door, claiming a quarter of the room for himself mentally.  Lockdown had the opposite corner's quarter.  The other half was mostly ship steering and computer consoles.  Behind both mechs, the Death's Head's windows gaped out onto star-pocked blackness.  
  
"I have everything I need : slices, dices, juliennes, blends, marinates, cleans itself, cleans the pool, tiles the roof, all in one!"  Swindle's voice grew louder as he spoke, both hands coming up protectively over his chest.  
  
"Great."  Lockdown turned the captain's chair, and sat.  It sounded louder than it should have.  The rest of the ship wasn't humming.  There was no whoosh of bottled coolant or puttering secondary heaters or the mosquito whine of electronics.  There was only the soft ticking and energon flow of the control room over the chassis-licking rumble of the engines as they fell asleep.  "So, it's time we thought realistically about our situation."  
  
"All right.  What's changed?"  
  
"Nothing.  There's just you and me and the ship somewhere in the dead of space.  And the only way to get home is if we catch a transwarp signal.  Which we can't.  So the only way to get back home is if a miracle happens and someone warps us back using your storage dimension's beacon ; or more likely, and the plan, I find a way back to mapped space with controlled jumps using Perceptor and Wheeljack's experiment, since it emits and folds its own transwarp fields."  
  
Lockdown waited for Swindle's response.  The merchant's engine turned over.  
  
"This is gonna take time, since we're doing it blind.  I can force the thing to jump at most once every ten hours, once a day.  There's no way of knowing how many jumps it'll be before we get close to the transwarp grid."  
  
"What about your programming?" Swindle asked.  
  
"Well I'm tryna make it go from zapping us wherever it wants and using it to actually go in one direction."  
  
"Wouldn't random chance have as high a chance of getting us back... if not better?"  
  
"It's better if I can jump us in a grid.  Then it's like playing minesweeper.  I've got Death's Head supertuned to sniff out even the past use of a transwarp field, so we can tell when we're getting closer and modify our jumps that way.  Once I figure out how t'do that."  Lockdown left off the detail that with their sensors so attuned to transwarp fields, they were sitting blind to much else.  
  
"Right.  Not much I can do there."  Swindle shrugged, feeling relief that he wasn't being called on to perform the impossible.  
  
"Probably not."  There was a pregnant pause where Lockdown held himself back from declaring Swindle dead weight.  "We have to talk about energon."  
  
Swindle felt a chill set into his plating.  "We can cut back on how much we intake," he suggested.  
  
"I did the calculations a long time ago.  Always figured I'd get marooned sometime.  Goes with the business.  Right now, the Death's Head has four months of energon on her, eleven if we dip into the engine supplies, twelve if we drink oil."  The bounty hunter spoke slowly, letting the plain facts and figures of their bleak future set in.  They had a little over a year to live, but if they used all that up, they'd have no way to even pilot the ship.  
  
"I always have two weeks of midgrade on me, and I have a cache of highgrade in storage, one hundred sixty-one cubes."  
  
"Oil?"  
  
"Forty-six drums."  
  
"Let's call that fifteen months total, a year and a half.  That's all we have.  And there's no use holding any back if you have it.  You can't fly the Death's Head without me, so if I die first you're shooting yourself in th—"  
  
"I know.  I'm not lying.  You think I want to die? Worse, you think we'll be out here for over a year?"  
  
"I don't know what to think, Swindle.  But my instincts always compute worst-case first."  Lockdown crossed his arms and legs.  Swindle sat back into the corner.  The Pergamum Project clattered below and pulled them into a fresh patch of nothingness.  
  
Five months later, Swindle laid in his corner quietly self-servicing under his forcefield.  The pinkish-purple bubble protected him from looking sharply at the stars, and from the frustrated curses of his companion.  Lockdown was equally happy for the shield's obfuscation and the silence it granted to his work.  Occasionally he looked over to see what Swindle was doing over the past eighty days, ranging from reading through his stock of fiction pads, to writing his secretive Log, to single player datapad games, to single player sex that doubtless let him forget about the time passing.  Lockdown had his work to distract him, even if it was grinding his gears.  Because for five months, they'd made little progress in their grid.  
  
Programming the Pergamum Project, The Thing, had taken thirty days.  The next fifty progressed one jump at a time in between ship maintenance.  The more they jumped, the sicker he felt.  Twisting himself inside out along with spacetime so often wasn't recommended even for proper spacebridge technicians.  Spacebridges of course were stable, and low powered compared to the sickly blue and pulsating thing that stuck its veins into the engine.  
  
Sometimes Lockdown felt like the thing had put its sucking roots into his spark instead.  Looking over at Swindle offered no respite to worry, as the merchant mech's face was dark and dull from lack of energon, those wide violet eyes lidded more from exhaustion than seduction, and more often than he was active, he was curled up into a golden ball in light fitful sleep.  Lockdown tried to touch him once, tenderly, but got an azure hand slapped away.  Just let me sleep, Swindle had grumbled.  Lockdown kicked him and went back to work.  His kick might have actually dented something if he hadn't been so tired.  But there was no time to sleep.  He had to stay awake for the both of them while his spark hammered in his chest painfully, slicing up his chamber with the sparklet's electric enthusiasm.  At least one person was happy.  
  
There's no getting away from it now, Lockdown thought, the kid'll probably emerge in space.  Logically, based on the timetable of any other sparklet, the dagger in his spark was bound to split off soon.  He hadn't told Swindle.  Whether for altruism or for not wanting to hear someone else worry aloud over and over, he hadn't decided.  He hadn't thought at all about how to raise a damn baby in space.  
  
He was too practical to believe in miracles like them arriving home this next jump, no this next jump, no this... but he was too afraid to think about any future beyond the next jump.  He didn't like being afraid, and it was happening to him far too often.  The worst part was that he was still fully in control.  He always liked being in control.  He was always in control of his future.  Even now, he controlled the ship, he controlled the thing, and he controlled Swindle too.  He had full power over shaping his future and yet he was the king of a sand in the ocean of the empty universe.  Every which way, stars bled out into a vacuum.  Every new day, the chance of starving to death increased.  Tick by tick, jump by jump, he had nightmares of driving towards a receding horizon and then sinking into a spark-crushing nothingness even as he felt himself jump beyond it.  
  
There was nothing out there.  The cosmic background radiation filled his hands.  He shook with it so close.  It muffled a scream.  
  
That was Swindle.  Lockdown reset his neck joints with a loud rolling clank to wake himself and spun his head around.  The arms dealer had a sort of satisfied look on his face, and some bulbous cylinder at his crotch, around his spike.  He was lying comfortably back on his Urayan pillow and Vos-embroidered futon.  Right, let him have all the fun.  It was better than thinking about death.  
  
"You won't build up the protoform that way," Lockdown said loudly, closing down a coding window.  
  
Swindle's forcefield lowered along with the projector forks in his shoulders.  "I'm sure I have plenty of your transfluid in stock already, Lockdown."  
  
"Mgh, Right."  
  
"Expecting to give another donation, are you? My _loading_ dock has only so much room you know."  Swindle's body angled away from Lockdown's approach ; despite his effortless come-ons he wasn't up for anything.  The bounty hunter noticed.  
  
"I just want a book."  
  
" _Moors of Kolkular : The Third Peal?_ "  
  
"Yeah, how could I live without knowing what becomes of Lord Ashwing and his passionate but strained romance with the brigand Whitefist? Just give me a crime thriller."  
  
"More in the mood for _Pride and Programming_? I understand.  Sometimes the classics are best."  Swindle produced said historical romance from his chestdrawer.  He knew a coded request when he heard it.  Lockdown let out a garbled huff but took the datapad anyway.  No reason to pretend he didn't like romance novels around the mech he'd made the mistake of bonding.  
  
And really he did want to find out what happened in the third book of that stupid fiery passions, scheming aristocrats, heaving headlights, cuirass-ripper _Moors_ series, because that indulgent trash was the perfect thing to distract him, and he'd never apologise.  But for now, the comfort of the witty repartée classics.  He needed a bit of comfort and, after all, _it is a fact universally acknowledged, that a single mech in possession of a grand revolutionary army must be in want of a second in command to plot against him._  
  
»"How very ill Mech Lyzack Bolt looks this morning, Mech Darcee," she cried ; "I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she is since the winter.  She is grown so grey and coarse! Windsurfer and I were agreeing that we should not have known her again."  
  
»However little Mech Darcee might have liked such an address, he contented himself with coolly replying that he perceived no other alteration than her being rather scuffed, no miraculous consequence of waging war in the summer.  
  
»"For my own part," she rejoined, "I must confess that I never could see any beauty in her.  Her face is too thin ; her paint application has no brilliancy ; and her features are not at all handsome. Her forehead crest wants character — there is nothing marked in its lines.  Her tyres are tolerable, but not out of the common way ; and as for her optics, which have sometimes been called so fine, I could never see anything extraordinary in them.  They have a sharp, shrewd look, which I do not like at all ; and in her air altogether there is a self-sufficiency without fashion, which is intolerable."  
  
»Persuaded as Mech Carlane Bling was that Darcee admired Lyzack, this was not the best method of recommending herself ; but angry people are not always wise ; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the success she expected.  He was resolutely silent, however, and, from a determination of making him speak, she contin—  
  
Swindle screamed.  Lockdown looked up, immediately annoyed that not only had Swindle been self-servicing again, but that he's been so wrapped up in reading that he hadn't even noticed.  He was getting soft.  Unobservant.  No he wasn't...  
  
With no toys in sight, Swindle's hands were firmly around a cube of energon while his legs kicked madly and his face contorted in definite pain.  Lockdown launched over, his hurried wheels staining the floor.  The minute their fields met, Lockdown felt that dagger in his spark twist and transform into a longsword.  He grunted and grimaced.  Then he pulled the cube from Swindle to avoid an accident, and helped the mech upright.  The merchant clung to Lockdown's shoulders.  Their fields grew chaotic and spiny together, attacking each other like a maelstrom of rosebushes.  It hurt more than either had ever hurt before, but only in confusion.  No one was bleeding.  No one was convulsing, other than Swindle's dramatics.  It was just emergence.  That's all.  
  
"You're making it worse," Lockdown yelled.  The fact that his chest was on fire and true pain was lacing his spark was not helping his mood.  That could happen for scintillas.  But not for munidors like Swindle, who was too busy moaning about his own problems as usual.  
  
"Things are moving inside me that I didn't even know I had in stock! I feel like I'm hosting a convention for plateworms!"  
  
"There's nothing wrong, just open up."  Lockdown forced his tone down to a growl.  
  
"Who elected you CEO of Emergence Inc?!"  
  
"We've both read the same books about it, but only one of us is screaming, so calm the scrap down."  Lockdown flicked Swindle's forehead.  Swindle moued and mewed, but stopped struggling.  
  
"I guess it's time... time for the de-merger."  
  
"Don't you dare say 'Welcome to the _business_ world, little one' when I spark them."  
  
"Oh, now you took all my lines."  
  
"Impossible.  Now open up."  
  
"Kiss me?"  
  
Lockdown reset his optics before looking down at the expectant golden bot below.  Swindle had taken his hands.  His limpid lavender pupils were wide with actual fear.  
  
"I think it's going to hurt..." Swindle demurred.  
  
"It's not gonna hurt.  Nut up, bolt brains," Lockdown said with a light slap to the lights on Swindle's helm.  Then he kissed him.  
  
When they pulled apart, Swindle's hands had relaxed.  
  
"Right-o.  I'm opening up.  You open right afterwards."  Swindle's chest gave a premature ruffle.  When no further encouragement came, he strained and the plates pulled out of place with a grinding shlick and a hard shlunk.  His optics fritzed.  " _You liar, that hurt!_ "  
  
"Do I have to take it out of you?!"  Lockdown looked in at the protoform.  It was thoroughly tangled up in Swindle's internals, in a way that probably wasn't right.  
  
"Yes! The contract said that you do all the work in the carrying and emergence!"  
  
"Primus and the Pit! I can't believe you're bringing that up now!"  Lockdown let out an animalistic growl before transforming his black right hand into delicate tools, while his favoured burgundy one started to move larger tubes to the side.  A second set of arms he'd grafted on for engine repair an hour earlier held Swindle's chest firmly in place.  
  
Swindle groaned and mewed during the procedure.  Behind the protoform, the merchant's back struts were still trying to push the body-to-be forward, making the chirurgery more difficult.  Lockdown looped wires and tubes out of the protoform's unfortunately long, bulbous limbs.  Swindle's backstruts finally pushed the protoform out and onto the Lockdown's lap below.  That's when Lockdown saw the real problem.  The strut holding up Swindle's processor had weakened and rusted again, and two large energon veins were welded by grease and decay to that place.  But now the veins were broken and loose, and the strut was pulled out of place, collapsed.  All because Swindle had gone for the bargain strut-doctor again.  Swindle's processor crashed back down into his empty abdominal cavity.  
  
Because his chest was open for the emergence and his internals had moved out of the way for the protoform that used to be there, Swindle's book-lung filters were no longer in place to stop the lowest processor's fall.  It fell, and then another processor fell with it, and with them, his personal storage uplink that had been grafted on.  Swindle's engine now started to run asymmetrically, and tilt visibly.  Lockdown stuck his burgundy hand in, punched the engine back in place, and only then started to panic.  
  
It was a chain reaction.  Swindle was luckily not online to experience it, processors falling apart and all, but his metallic forges then started to slip up through his leaking energon, and his lubricant bladders slipped right out of place.  Then Swindle fell supine on the floor as Lockdown's hands had better things to do than support him.  
  
Lockdown's smaller arm mods went to pushing everything back in place while Lockdown activated his welder.  He popped his hip spines out of their moorings with his black hand, and then freed his emergency solder from their insides.  He rammed the spines' hard casing into Swindle's backstruts for processor and engine support.  He sopped up as much energon as he could with Swindle's pillow, then shred it to make wraps for the broken energon lines.  He coaxed the distended plates of Swindle's body, then banged them back into shape.  He poured the nearby energon cube down his partner's throat, and then, for the first time in ages, he prayed to Primus as Yoketron had taught him.  
  
Instead, Project Pergamum jumped again.  The pain that had been smouldering in Lockdown's spark bloomed into a chrysanthemum of blades.  For spite, he cursed Primus, then reassured himself, aloud, that nothing supernatural existed apart from the great sea of energon that churned beneath his faraway home and drove its slowly shifting plates.  And now, since he was so far from that home, there was only one spark that mat— two sparks that mattered.  
  
The protoform lay, dead looking, in a pile of energon, spilled lubricant, and spoiled hydrocarbon bile.  The tiny spark inside of him was screaming to get at it, boring into the spark casing from behind.  Lockdown winced ; his vision swam.  He picked up the protoform, wiped it off with the clean corner of Swindle's futon, then used the engine room's dehumidifier to bathe it.  The rungs down and up from the engine hurt his hands and fenders.  Like someone digging a nail under his plating, into right where it met his undermesh.  The futon was too dirty now, so he dried the cleaned protoform with his poncho.  He'd read about contaminants preventing the spark from adhering.  Not taking no chances, he thought.  
  
Lockdown opened his chest, and for once it was a relief, like releasing a lot of bad oil.  His spark chamber came next, feeling strangely slick even though he wasn't interfacing.  The sparklet pulled against his spark and slowed its spin.  Lockdown held the protoform up to his chest.  The sparklet pulled harder.  It hurt like slag.  Then, the spark link audibly popped.  Lockdown was mildly surprised, and almost missed the moment when the tiny spark nestled into the protoform.  The pain went away entirely.  There was innermost energon around the sparklet, and from it, a spark chamber crystallised.  The protoform's chest sealed up.  Colour bloomed from the spark outwards as nanites woke up : gold from Swindle, and black probably from Lockdown's hand, maybe from his collar.  The eyes opened, and the optics blinked online for the first time.  They were red.  Lockdown thought that was nice.  He thought the entire emergence had gone pretty well, despite one parent down in stasis-lock.  He hoped.  He had to check on that, actually, so it was time to&emdash  
  
Lockdown fell backwards, offline.  The newborn Cybertronian toppled off his chest and rolled onto the damp poncho.  Open for business.


	7. What have you been up to, kid?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shinti = parent who developed and carried the child's spark  
> muni = parent who built the child's protoform

The first thing the new Cybertronian saw was a zebra blob. Her shinti's spark was fluttering under her, and his field was all around her, happy and proud. Then the field contracted suddenly, the spark skipped, and the new Cybertronian felt herself fall down. She clattered against something hard, green, and black, and then bounce onto the floor.  Tucking in her arms with fear, her momentum sent her rolling along the smooth tile floor until something big and soft stopped her.  It was cold and wet, but it smelled just like her shinti, so she liked it.  It was tan, with blurry lines of burgundy.  She saw some more of that colour over by the big black and green blob.  Her shinti, she could tell by the faint cling of an EM field.  The world was gigantic, bright, and grey.  There were big patches of black to her right and to her left that twinkled with lights.  It was too big.  She gave up on seeing the rest of the room, and lifted the wet cloth.  She scooted underneath.  She waited for her shinti to move again.  
  
By the time she'd given up on waiting, the cloth had warmed up and almost fully dried out from her body heat and worried fans.  She loved the thing that smelt like shinti when it was soft and dry and warm.  She rolled back over to her shinti, flailing her limbs until she figured out how to crawl with her hands and have the wheels of her legs drag behind.  She swatted at her shinti.  He remained offline.  She could tell he was there, somewhere, so she swatted harder.  She moved from one palm to two, sitting on her haunches and beeping softly with each hit.  
  
This was so annoying!  She was hungry and her shinti wouldn't even move.  That spark that had fed her for ages was stuck behind thick plates.  She was feeling tired already.  She zapped him with her spark, a last resort.  Finally, something came back to her, the spark's call suffusing through her shinti's field.  He was very tired, worried, and hurt ; that's what she could read in his field.  Her own tiny field flared first in annoyance, and then in worry.  Would he never wake up?  She shocked him again, and felt faint.  Her deep grey face smashed into his side.  She was too tired to move.  She could feel and hear her shinti's spark behind all of his slumbering systems.  It was happy to hear from her.  But it was very, very tired, and it was kind of her fault.  
  
Finally, she gave up on her shinti too.  Tired, tired, tired, that's all he said.  She was tired too.  She pushed herself away from him, searching for the scent of something tasty.  The world was too big, still, but she thought she smelled something.  She looked around and there far away was a colourful blob.  She crawled toward it, seeing its colours come into sharper focus, greens, golds, purples and a swath of sparkling pink.  She crawled faster, spinning her wheels.  The pink stuff smelled so good.  She put her hand in it, then tasted it.  This was food.  It went down somewhat oily, and a bit too thick.  The edges of the puddle were tacky, getting sticky all over her hands.  She had to lick it up slow.  But there was a lot of it.  She figured this puddle would never run out.  
  
Feeling fully energised but more exhausted than ever, she made the long crawl back to her cloth house, curled up under it, and went to sleep.  
  
Hunger woke her up.  She returned to the puddle but found it dry.  She patted and beat at the floor with her hands, kicking up clods and chips of the dried energon food.  She had to chew it off her hands now, which turned out to be a bit easier than licking it, but it made her internals grumble and click.  Her vocaliser came online, doing preliminary grinding that sounded like a hum.  Then the energon travelled down to her tanks, which jostled around liquefying and refining it.  She felt sick.  Even her insides were getting a workout.  She went back to her cloth house and her sleep.  
  
Eventually, her body got used to processing solid energon.  There was a crystal of it on the big green swirly patterns blanket in the corner.  She tried chewing on that, and her fangs managed to break off a sliver, but her vocaliser's little grinders couldn't handle it at all.  She choked on it and was forced to hurk it up with some of her last meal.  Still, it tasted very sweet to suck on, so she took it with her, travelling with the suckable sliver in one fist while she crawled.  
  
Her dried puddle of food was attached to a big body.  The body was violet and gold, and its EM field was full of pain and sleep, deeper than her shinti's.  She didn't like putting down her shard of energon.  She was afraid it would disappear when she turned her back.  But she needed both hands to climb.  It was very far up to get to the spark.  When she heaved herself onto the shelflike chest, she felt what must have been her muni.  She recognised that spark.  She let herself slip down.  To her great satisfaction, the sliver of crystallised energon was still there by her muni's foot where she'd left it.  
  
It took a dozen more waking periods for the new Cybertronian to fully explore the floor of the world.  She learned about glass by bumping into the windows.  Each time she looked out them, she could see more stars.  Her vision was finally calibrating, along with sound.  She could hear the faint whirr from the walls all around her, and she could hear when one of her parents' tanks gurgled or their dreaming processors clicked.  The more she could see and hear, the more places she wanted to go.  There was a tower of boxes and body parts in one corner that begged to be climbed.  It sat on top of a sheer metal bench with smooth sides.  She couldn't reach high enough to get a handhold, no matter how hard she tried.  This inspired her to try standing which also didn't work, and jumping which also-also didn't work.  
  
Crawling or rolling remained her main forms of transport, since walking was a leap of innovation beyond her.  Yet by rolling she found a fun game to play.  The corner of the room by her offline muni, the one under the giant tank of energon that was probably miles above her, had a row of bowling pins.  They came in different sizes and weights, but she could line them up and then crash into them.  She imagined how much easier it would be to play if she could just hurry back to her start line while her muni set the pins back up.  But then her start line was rolling off of her muni's lap, so that probably would break the game.  
  
The dry puddle of food by her muni was half gone.  It was now more imperative than ever that either she wake up her parents or find a way to the giant pink tank of food.  She'd tried chewing on the pink stains in her muni's pillow and futon, but that took too much work to soften and then wring out the energon.  The answer, she was sure, lay in the tower of metal flesh in the far corner.  
  
She dragged her house all the way over to the corner.  It was a very useful house.  It was soft, but thick, and if she folded it into a small enough arch, it stayed in place.  Also, when folded, it became thicker, which was a revelation to her tiny mind.  Carefully, struggling against the sheer amount of cloth in the poncho home, she folded it into a floppy brick.  She pushed it over to the bench that mocked her.  She climbed onto the folded cloth.  She could reach to the top of the metal bench now.  She sat and took a breather, sucking on her energon crystal.  Yes, she could do this.  
  
With admirable strength for her size and newness, she hoisted herself up onto the bench that was probably a table.  There were arms and legs in front of her.  All sorts.  And they were surprisingly heavy.  She couldn't budge a single leg or foot.  The arms didn't give way.  She slapped at them and nothing happened.  Just like her parents, except deader.  She warbled unhappily.  Finally, she found something she could push.  It was thin.  When she placed her hands on it, and then licked it to make sure it wasn't food, it changed dramatically.  Zebra shapes and calico splotches sprung up on its surface.  She could make it all move around by dragging her hand on the surface.  That was pretty but useless.  She pushed it into the floor to play with later.  She had a mission.  
  
The tower was full of multicoloured body parts, plenty to choose from.  She patted and swatted at every one, flexing fingers and tugging on toes.  Diligence was her weapon in the war against hunger.  And it led her to a weapon.  Slapping at yet another knob on an arm, it lit up faintly, sensing her EM field.  She pushed on it harder, beeping at it angrily.  There was only so much force a baby could put on a mod, but it was enough to activate the automatic latches.  The mod sprung out of its place and clattered down to the base of the body part pile.  Pipping happily, she tumbled down the uneven stairway of prostheses right after the loose mod.  
  
Once the new Cybertronian and the mod were together again, she placed it between her feet to keep it still, and then pounded at its top and twisted its middle.  It made bright lights, and the occasional funny sound.  Finally, she found what were to her two perfect handholds.  She pulled back on the handles, recreating what would be only a pinch to an adult.  An arc of light came out of the front of the mod between her feet.  Startled, she let go.  The arc came together as a bolt and shot off toward the far wall.  It left behind a light scorch mark and a loop of metal.  Baby's first blaster.  
  
She shot the auto-welding staple gun two more times, getting the hang of the pull and release. Then, she moved her feet a bit, and sent the next staple to the side.  She could aim it.  She lifted the blaster, lining up its business end with the tank of energon.  This is the position it needed to be in.  She then realised it had been a bad idea to knock that thin thing to the ground because she needed a way to get the blaster to point more up but stay in place.  She then remembered that she could fold up her house again and use that to help her make the right shape to aim the blaster.  She pushed the blaster onto the floor.  It went off, sending a staple into Lockdown's right thigh.  
  
On the floor, the new Cybertronian wasted no time to drag over her new blaster and her thin colourful thing.  Holding her shard of energon crystal in her mouth, she let herself indulge in its sweetness while she pushed her house into shape by leaning into it with her back.  It took her about twenty-five Cybertronian minutes to get the poncho and the blaster lined up to shoot vaguely at the sparkling pink tank above her muni.  She shot a few times.  Nothing hit.  She pushed her home closer.  She fired again.  She repeated the process.  Finally, back in the middle of the room beyond her shinti, she got closer with her shots.  Zzzz.  Flbang.  Flbang.  Flbang.  Crash!  
  
Her last shot hit the tank.  The superheated metal staple and plasma bore into the aluminium glass, then cooled quickly.  The glass cracked not from the impact, but from the temperature change.  Sweet, sparkling, pink energon poured down onto the floor next to Swindle in a seemingly never-ending waterfall.  The new Cybertronian let out a shrill bleep of triumph, holding her energon shard above her head.  She'd won : food forever.  
  
Over the next few days, she drank well, and played with her makeshift toys.  The flimsy datapad was full of squiggles she couldn't read, but there were a few pictures of people dancing or talking or sitting and holding hands.  She wanted to hold someone's hand too, or to be held, but everyone else in the world was asleep.  She turned her parents' hands to the side before going to sleep, slung her house over the fingers as a tent, and cuddled into their warmth.  There were six hands for six sleep-times.  She beeped softly into the warm fingers, please hold me.  
  
The blaster had more surprises for her.  She'd tried aiming it at the weird big blinking array on the other side of the room, but it had let out a very loud alarm until she hot it more until the glass broke.  She didn't want to do that again.  Shooting at any glassy things was right out.  She shot at the grey sides of the world, trying to knock down interesting things that sat on shelves above.  She knocked down a few heavy sharp things like a spear and a hook, a pot with a blue and green crystalline plant in it that was inedible, and finally a big house.  It wasn't like her poncho house, but it had her colours, and it was hollow on the inside with a hole in front.  When she beeped inside it, her voice echoed funnily.  It had a big gold fork on top, and it was shiny enough on the sides for her to see herself.  She had her muni's face and her shinti's chest.  She put her handprint on the house in energon from the food lake she'd made.  
  
But the biggest surprise from her blaster was when she'd shot her shinti.  She aimed the blaster right at Lockdown's midsection and fired.  The shot in his leg hadn't hurt him, but if something could break glass, she figured it might wake up her shinti.  The staple went in and welded in place.  The big black and green bot grunted automatically, and then made a very, very weird sound.  It was a long and drawn out shifting, like someone climbing the stairs with the sound of shuffling metal.  Metal really did shift, though.  Her shinti's body went haywire, limbs clamping up and turning quickly.  His arms folded into his chest, his waist swivelled all the way around, and his legs melded together.  He was now a weird boxy thing with wheels on the bottom and hid red-glassed back on his top.  This was the most amazing thing that the new Cybertronian had ever seen.  
  
She didn't know that she had hit a pressure point for his T-cog, but she felt an answering call from her own.  Every plate on her body was tingling, and her processor was thinking in images and shapes, trying to tell her how to convert too.  She flailed around, and rolled in her little ball, and screeched loudly trying to make it happen.  Her t-cog turned wildly, but nothing happened.  Sadly she went and kicked the nearest tyre.  She had no hands from her shinti to sleep in now.  He muni's big purple hands were fine, but she wanted variety.  More than that, she wanted the secret to changing.  Her spark sent out a pulse, hoping that this time her shinti would respond.  He didn't, not quite, but Lockdown's spark did send back a resonance, and the new Cybertronian's spark read it and understood.  Her T-cog whirred to life fully, twisting with a purpose, now knowing how to pull and push.  Two minutes later, she had transformed for the first time into the world's tiniest Corvette Stingray.  
  
Tootling happily and loudly, she raced around the room.  She understood this!  This was the way to get around, so very easy, so very fast.  The world didn't seem so large now.  
  
Her only problem was that she couldn't carry things in this form, having not figured out her seating space yet.  But she could make do like this.  She felt free.  She cuddled up with her poncho house in her muni's hand, and slept for a long time.  
  
After learning to transform, the new Cybertronian's days were filled with more questions than play, exceedingly deep thought for one less than ten days old.  Where did energon come from?  Where did she come from?  What was the loud wall she'd cracked for?  What was the strange sound that came from below sometimes?  Why weren't her parents awake?  They didn't hate her, or she'd feel that in their fields, so why wouldn't they wake up?  She shot her muni in the stomach too, but he hadn't transformed : why?  Would she ever get bigger, or was this her size?  If there were only three people in the world, then why did the flimsy show pictures of lots of other bots?  What was taxbreaks and why did her muni murmur about it sometimes?  
  
She was playing bowling when her EM field was filled all the way up with confusion.  She crashed into her bobbly pins, unrolled from her ball, and then both felt and heard her shinti transform again.  As his body reshuffled, the plating grew up to the ceiling.  He was standing.  He was enormous.  He was awake.  
  
Lockdown looked down at her, and the mess around her.  It took a few seconds for him to realise that this was his child.  Then, with a nervous but placating field, he bent down and patted her on the head.  
  
"Hey, kid.  You're alive." Stating the obvious had never felt so awkward.  Either way, his child didn't know what the sounds he was making meant anyway.  
  
"Beep!"  She said hello, and put out her hands to grab at his big fingers.  
  
"How long was I out?"  
  
"Meep!"  
  
Lockdown lifted his hand, but the baby remained firmly attached to it.  He ended up lifting her up to eye level.  She looked at him adoringly.  
  
He didn't really know what to do.  His childhood was a blur, with the more formative memories being in the temples as an acolyte sold to pay off his parents' debt and then in Cyber Ninja Corps as a padawan sold to pay off a priest's debt.  Vaguely, he supposed he should be nurturing, but he just didn't know the script to that performance.  So he fell back on what the people he'd liked most as a kid had done, and decided that Cyber Ninja padawan would be it for her.  
  
The ex-ninja opened up the hood of his car, that being his studded back, and plopped her inside.  He heard her excited squeal from inside, and felt her little hands and head pressing into his windshield and doorglass, while her feet pushed at his seats.  She was definitely having fun.  He remembered what that exciting view of the world from above was like, looking through Garry-sempai's cockpit, and that comfortable feel of sempai's seat on his plating when he drifted off to sleep, and promptly stopped worrying about his child's safety.  She was inside his hood, so she was good.  
  
Next it was time to take stock of the control room : "Primus on a pogo-stick, what the scrap did you get up to?"  
  
The energon tank was broken, and its contents were still streaming onto the floor because, of course, it was hooked up the engines' pumps.  There was a lovely puddle of energon on the floor next to Swindle who was obviously in stasis lock, and had a staple in his stomach.  Yoketron's helmet was on the floor with a little handprint on it, and the ship's pet aquamarine cactus was blooming next to it.  It hadn't been in bloom when he'd split off the kid's spark.  So it had been at least a day.  He could see _Pride and Programming_ sticking out from under his poncho, also not where he'd left either of those things, and the staple gun was sitting near a little triangle of toppled sex toys.  Oh, and one of the ship's navigation screens was broken.  Staples to blame again, just like the new set of tiny handholds all over the back wall and cabin door, which was just vexing because how could the kid have gotten up to the top of his stack of boxes where he'd been keeping the stapler?  She'd been busy.  He was honestly impressed.  
  
After switching out his right arm's rivet gun for a diagnostic medlink ripped from a bifurcated nurse he'd found, Lockdown went over to check on Swindle.  Deciding to go for the medical port with the most power, Lockdown swung open Swindle's chestplates and plugged into the medical port above the still well protected spark chamber.  The diagnosis was immediate and unsurprising : full stasis lock, the result of all of Swindle's insides collapsing.  The suggested treatment : bolt everything back in place properly, feed medical grade energon, and pray.  The big surprise from the medical uplink was how long the stasis lock had been active : nine days.  So, the kid had been on her own for nine days.  What a Vector Sigma slagging miracle.  
  
As if she'd heard him thinking about her, the new Cybertronian started to whine and kick in Lockdown's hood.  "Slaggit, kid, calm down," he shouted back at her, rapping on his windshield with the back of his hook.  
  
She beeped louder, kicking at his steering wheel with force until she found his horn.  To his bottomless embarrassment, it started honking with each kick.  He'd thought that was controlled electronically, but apparently it was analog.  He opened up his back to pull her out by the tiny coattails.  Heh, just like his own.  That thought made him smile before he settled into a cross face.  
  
"Whadda want?"  
  
After looking around the room, she started reaching behind him and spinning her wheels on the axles.  
  
"Okay, you can go down.  Just don't disturb me n' your muni.  We have talking to do."  
  
Lockdown placed his child on the ground.  She immediately transformed and zipped into her helmet playhouse.  There, she squeezed her shoulders really hard within vehicle mode until her own steering wheel horn honked.  
  
"What a cheeky..."  Yet another surprise overcame the bounty hunter's ability to speak.  She'd learned to transform somehow already.  Where?  How?  He was sure that he and Swindle were both in bot form. Was this one of those magical parent moments that he'd always heard softsparks and losers blabbering about?  If so, it was slightly more eerie than sparkwarming.  Beepers, as far as his limited experience with them told him, were supposed to crawl around learning to walk, and of course beep.  The one he'd squirted out of his chest was rolling around on her wheels and honking at him from Yoketron's helmet.  "Fine, stay there."  
  
Honk honk.  
  
Lockdown sagged in front of Swindle.  He couldn't get any better struts for Swindle without having a good fresh corpse around, which for once in his life he was lacking.  He had a few not so fresh ones, but that'd do him no good.  Swindle needed a real doctor.  The best Lockdown could do had already been done.  The best he could give now was to portion off for Swindle's use all the medical grade cubes they'd aggregated.  Those cubes were supposed to give them both an extra week or two.  Lockdown thought morosely that the minute Swindle woke up and noticed they were all gone, he'd probably accuse his bonded of stealing them for himself.  As if anyone would want to drink that foul stuff on purpose.  
  
Luckily, with Swindle in stasis lock, the merchant's mouth didn't protest the medical grade's dank and noisome aftertaste.  The highly refined energon was made thick with minerals and self-repair nanites.  It crept like sludge down Swindle's intake. Twenty more days of this slow procedure to look forward to, making sure every drop fell in while he held Swindle's stupid head carefully still.  Lockdown sighed to himself.  To think : years ago, he'd have given half of all he had— well an eighth of all he had —just to be able to hold Swindle this fragging tenderly.  Of course, the feeling lost all its lustre and appeal with Swindle offline and his body struggling to repair itself.  Slag, he really was getting soft after all, to think about something stupid like holding the box-bodied cheat.  
  
Then again, he'd had a slaggin' _baby_ with the brick-headed conman.  
  
Lockdown rapped on the top of Yoketron's helmet.  The kid beeped from inside, and he heard her transform.  He put down a saucer in front of the helmet's face aperture, her little archway door, then filled it with energon.  The other half he drank himself.  
  
"Eat that.  I'm cleaning up, then I'll be in the engine room."  He knew she couldn't understand him, but talking aloud to her seemed right.  Even if he wasn't doing any baby-talk, and Primus forfend he ever do that anyway.  
  
The room was easy to clean for a fully grown bot.  The baby'd left some tracks of tacky energon all over, but it rubbed out easily with water and a bit of Lockdown's secret energon solvent.  (Just some milk of citrine sponge like Garry-sempai'd taught him long ago after he'd fallen and cut open his leg right on the elder ninja's meditation pads when he was supposed to be cleaning things.  He still didn't understand why no one had been mad.)  The malformed bot sent Swindle's dirty laundry, and the dildos, right down the engine hatch to worry about later.  Sure she didn't know what they were, but he'd be slagged before his kid played with them like dolls or something.  All Swindle's fault anyway for having them out.  All his own fault for letting the room devolve into a pigsty.  The staples in the walls weren't his fault though.  He just felt lucky that none of them had hit the ship's viewing windows.  As for the computer screen... he didn't want to think about that.  
  
It took a few hours to manually port all the functions that had been displaying on that screen to other screens.  The computer was undamaged.  But he'd just shoved processes over to the screen one by one instead of itemising them as a list in a startup file like an intelligent mech.  All the fun of reorganising file folders and desktop icons.  After that, he simply made sure that the thing down below wouldn't send them jumping again.  He popped open another cube of energon and poured some out for the kid again.  He told her he was going down to the engine again.  
  
The minute he started fiddling with the engine, trying to stop a strange rattling, of course the thing turned on.  He'd accidentally undone a loose cincher, and with a bam to his spark and his reality, the Death's Head jumped through itself into space unknown.  Lockdown's spark wasn't having any of that.  
  
It was only a day later when Lockdown woke up to thumping from above.  His medical information was pinging him say that his spark was overall healthy but in a bit of shock.  70% healed, please don't do whatever you just did again until 90%.  Beeping joined the thumping.  Lockdown groaned, dragged himself to his knees, and disconnected from his own medical port.  He stood, then rapped on the hatch to the control room.  
  
"Be right up, kid."  
  
"Mleeeeep!"  The pounding continued even harder.  Lockdown relented and opened the hatch.  His baby peered down at him with bright and curious red eyes.  Cat's eyes, just like Swindle's.  Her head was just like his, and her arms that clutched at the opening.  Lockdown shook his head.  
  
"Go back to the helmet."  He pointed.  She didn't understand.  He pointed again, harder, making a scary face.  She left.  
  
He thought she was gone for good, and had started to prop open the plating of the ship's smelter, when he heard the tiny vroom of her engine in car mode followed by her beeping again.  He looked up at the circle of light between the engine room and the control room and saw his baby holding a glob of congealed energon.  She waved the magenta glob at him.  
  
"No, I'm fine, kid."  
  
She beeped at him insistently.  So did his tanks.  
  
"All right, fine."  He started climbing the ladder and only then did she relent.  When his face reached her level, she pushed the energon on his mouth, then beeped.  He was stunned for a second, then picked her up.  "Yeah, how did I ever say alive before I had you to feed me, right?  Primus, kid, that's what I'm supposed to tell you."  
  
She yawned, and he put her down.  Foregoing being the least bit civilised, he scraped up his meal from the floor like she did until his tanks felt full.  He could fix the tank later.  He needed to get the glass from the smelter.  When he was finished eating, Lockdown turned to check on the baby.  She was trundling toward him, pulling his poncho behind her, looking sleepy as a cybersloth.  
  
"You like that, huh?"  
  
She yawned again and laid down onto the floor, pulling her cozy cloth home over her.  It was definitely hers, not his.  He could sense her logic, and didn't have the heart to argue with it.  When he heard her systems go into recharge, he picked her up, folded in the poncho, and slipped her and her home into his hood.  His hood clicked back into place at the back of his neck.  The red glass and six spines on his back could keep her secret and safe no matter where he travelled.  He understood that, somehow.  He felt her curl into the poncho more, fitting her head against his passenger seat.  That was good, the poncho would keep her from shaking around in there.  He understood that too.  And then he realised that, just maybe, his coding was giving him a break, and he wouldn't end up as a failure of a shinti.  
  
The odds were still high against it, but he'd go into parenthood... _senseihood_ fighting.


End file.
